Complexity and Suffering

Einstein's Riddle as CSP

2011-02-17T11:44:00.000-08:00

This python script solves a riddle known on the web as "Einstein's riddle", although there seems to be little if any support for Einstein actually creating it. Nevertheless, it has become my "hello world" for machine learning/reasoning technologies.
The riddle as described here is as follows:
Einsteins' Riddle

In a street there are five houses, painted five different colours.
In each house lives a person of different nationality
These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage, smoke a different brand of cigar and keep a different pet.

THE QUESTION: WHO OWNS THE FISH?

HINTS

The Brit lives in a red house.
The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
The Dane drinks tea.
The Green house is next to, and on the left of the White house.
The owner of the Green house drinks coffee.
The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill.
The man living in the centre house drinks milk.
The Norwegian lives in the first house.
The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
The German smokes Prince.
The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
The man who smokes Blends has a neighbour who drinks water.

Here is a simple python script using python-constraint:

from constraint import *
problem = Problem()
def left_of(a,b):
 return a < b
def right_of(a,b):
 return not left_of(a,b)
def next_to(a,b):
 return abs(a - b) == 1
colors = ["yellow","red","green","blue","white"]
nats = ["norwegian","dane","brit","german","swede"]
bevs = ["water","tea","milk","coffee","beer"]
smokes = ["dunhill","blends","pall_mall", "prince", "bluemaster"]
pets = ["cat","horse","bird","fish","dog"]

house_numbers = [1,2,3,4,5]

problem.addVariables(colors, house_numbers)
problem.addVariables(nats, house_numbers)
problem.addVariables(bevs, house_numbers)
problem.addVariables(smokes, house_numbers)
problem.addVariables(pets, house_numbers)

problem.addConstraint(AllDifferentConstraint(),colors)
problem.addConstraint(AllDifferentConstraint(),nats)
problem.addConstraint(AllDifferentConstraint(),bevs)
problem.addConstraint(AllDifferentConstraint(),smokes)
problem.addConstraint(AllDifferentConstraint(),pets)

#specific constraints from the riddle
problem.addConstraint(lambda brit, red: brit == red, ("brit", "red"))
problem.addConstraint(lambda swede, dog: swede == dog, ("swede", "dog"))
problem.addConstraint(lambda dane, tea: dane == tea, ("dane", "tea"))
problem.addConstraint(lambda green, white: next_to(green, white) and \
                   left_of(green, white),("green", "white"))
problem.addConstraint(lambda green, coffee: green == coffee,
                   ("green", "coffee"))
problem.addConstraint(lambda pall_mall, bird: pall_mall == bird,
                   ("pall_mall", "bird"))
problem.addConstraint(lambda yellow, dunhill: yellow == dunhill,
                   ("yellow", "dunhill"))
problem.addConstraint(lambda milk: milk == 3, ["milk"])
problem.addConstraint(lambda norwegian: norwegian == 1, ["norwegian"])
problem.addConstraint(lambda blends, cat: next_to(blends, cat),
                   ("blends", "cat"))
problem.addConstraint(lambda horse, dunhill: next_to(horse, dunhill),
                   ("horse", "dunhill"))
problem.addConstraint(lambda bluemaster, beer: bluemaster == beer,
                   ("bluemaster", "beer"))
problem.addConstraint(lambda german, prince: german == prince,
                    ("german","prince"))
problem.addConstraint(lambda norwegian, blue: next_to(norwegian, blue),
                   ("norwegian", "blue"))
problem.addConstraint(lambda blends, water: next_to(blends, water),
                   ("blends", "water"))

# now get a solution
solution = problem.getSolution()

# get in the form we want
answer = {}
for i in range(1,6):
 answer[i] = {}

for k,v in solution.items():
 if k in colors:
     answer[v]['color'] = k
 elif k in nats:
     answer[v]['nationality'] = k
 elif k in bevs:
     answer[v]['beverage'] = k
 elif k in smokes:
     answer[v]['smokes'] = k
 elif k in pets:
     answer[v]['pet'] = k 

print "**** Solution ****"
for i in range(1,6):
 print i, answer[i]['color'],answer[i]['nationality'],\
       answer[i]['beverage'],answer[i]['smokes'], answer[i]['pet']

for i in range(1,6):
 if answer[i]['pet'] == 'fish':
     owner_of_fish = answer[i]['nationality']
     break
print
print "Answer to riddle question: who has the fish for a pet? - the", \
   owner_of_fish

# end of script -------------------------------------------------------

x

2010-01-28T01:42:00.000-08:00

all learning is a quest
for more awareness

learning must then
eventually fold in on itself

the program that reads its
own code

the blue faced devil

2010-01-28T01:27:00.000-08:00

i have sat with the
blue faced devil
laughing at tragedy
at the ugly
and lame
and simple minded
and passionate
and weak
and hopeful
and trusting
and playful
and i have seen
past him
and before him
as history
as past
as dreams
as nothing

The network of "me"

2010-01-18T01:30:00.000-08:00

How Many?

How many voices
inside your voice
inside your head?

How many heads
inside your voice?

How many
ways-it-can-be?
ways-it-was?

Whatever you do,
don't let it be one.

One is never enough.

Evolution is good - correction: Evolution is God

2009-11-08T16:30:00.000-08:00

First of all - I do not believe in any religion, on the contrary, if there were a "god", prime mover, etc., it would most certainly be NP-Complete, and hence not codifiable. The world's religions were developed before we had any insight into the universal nature of computability.

God cannot describe him/her/it self!

Why? - Godel's Incompleteness.
If there is a god of some sort, e.g. supernatural agent that determines all things, then there must be some unknowable part of it.

Is there such a thing? Yes. But it is not a primitive explanation from our evolutionary past.
It is reason. Everything reason says is true. Reason says what is fair. Reason says what is just, not the atavistic "HEART".
The heart is a magnificent organ. The emotions are a set of sensations that can or can not be associated with a set of circumstances.
When today's religions sprang up, they represented the best reasoning of the day. The explanations of where things came from was the cosmology of the day. The rules were the social science and economics of the day. The meaning of life fit with all the rest of their "science" and represented the best philosophy of the day.
If the "bibles" had just been amended as reasoning evolved we would have science for cosmology and social science for morals and ethics and epsitemology and ontology and logic and so on.
We would have learned Marx, and Sartre, and Bordieau in sunday school. We would learn how game theory applies to society and how mirror neurons are part of the "mystery" ingredient of "completeness" even when it is logically impossible. We would have learned how life "actually" works (given the current science) - and our children would get an even better picture.
We could have avoided ourselves the embarassment of Dawkin's clumsy, overly emotive, defense of something he barely has a grasp on.
Reason explains everything....eventually.
I may not always obey reason, but if I want to "do right" I follow it, no matter what it says.
If reasoning says the heavy airplane will fly, I will not doubt it can fly.
If reasoning says the fair way to deal with my neighbor can not be oblivious to Pareto optimality, then I will not consider myself fair until I know about it.
If reasoning says that cooperative Nash Equilibrium is equivalent to looking out for the group first, then yourself, I will see that as a mandate for two identities, the self, and the group: first human, then animals, then all life, then all things.
I pray by reasoning, I live by reasoning, I am defined by reasoning - and am becoming more and more "like" reasoning, every day.
Reasoning is my "God" - my bible is everything knowable - it is not static - but evolving.
Thinking this way, it is easy to say that God is also "Evolution" (not just biological)
Yet, here we are, in the 21st century, pomo, post relativity, post quantum, ... and are debating evolution??? Because someone forgot to update their blog????

zenophobia

2009-04-09T13:50:00.000-07:00

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Backward in time
the plant explains
the seed explains
the earth explains
the water explains

Here and now
explains the map
Past and future
stand in reflection
---------------------------------------------------------------------
It is so easy to die
let your life to this moment go
and admit about this corpse
what you could never admit about
"yourself "
It is so easy to die
when you do it this way
--------------------------------------------------
I am Philosopher

I am philosopher because I love wisdom
and I love the love of wisdom
and because i have taken the time to learn to
say and think loveOf* wisdomOf*

i am philosopher because i make no apologies
for seeking the truth above all things

i am philospher because everything i do
and learn and experience adds to one thing:
"what is this and how does it work?"

i am philosopher because i say so
because i look in every field, every art,
every image or movement for one thing

i am philosopher because i can tell the
difference between the sign and the signified

i am philosopher
i philosophize always

i am philosopher
because "people" hate me
i am a gadfly
i am hemlock
i am refusenik
and commie

i don't stop asking
expanding
including
reasoning

ever

i am

i am not disturbed by Godel
or Turing machines

computation is not at odds with philosophy

i am not at odds with Bayes

not only is "god" dead
god was never alive
nor any true believer in god

i am philosopher
full time

when i eat (what is eating, what is food)
when i shower (what is clean, what is running water, what is sensation)
when i dream - what i dream

i am philosopher in spite
of the puppet show called
culture

with planned stages like chickens hatched
and farmed each with chicken myths repeated
endlessly

in spite of colonies
and atavistic loyalties
in spite of stoogism

and impenetrable hypocrisy

i philosophize in the thick
of being right

i philosophize as the world prays
to walls and rocks and books and bosses and fathers and feelings
and mom

i philosophize against
against
against

fight-flight, punishment-reward, pain-pleasure, plus-minus....

these are the politic of Braitenberg vehicles
no room for philosophers in there

what kind of philosopher MUST know these things - must know de-sade and sartre
and soren and witt (in words and in pictures) and buddha?

what kind of philosopher MUST know about everything
that changes everything?!

"my kind' ...

What a racket there is each time an ape presents.
Each symbolic ape pulling the lever that labels
the specimen correctly - each receiving their treat

What monotony! Lifting the cup to their lips with
the same expression each time
laughing at the same place each time
voiding in the same place
and calling it "being at home".

"the first technology fed on superstition and fear
- it was called religion
the second was based on religion, and power
-it was called empire
the third was based on stupidity and cowardice and empire
-it was called self-preservation

the fourth was based on empire and self-interest and deceit
-it was called the middle class
the fifth technology was based on everything else"

how many ways?

2009-03-16T22:57:00.000-07:00

Off In the Distance

these big dreams...
that take so long to get to

promised to the young

given to the old

and in between

the "straight" line

straight past

this or that

that doesn't fit

straight off into the distance

---------------------------------

The First Tremolo

drawn by the sound
of beating wings
of
sound

stirred by the thing that makes
us children

they come running to the music
room
like tiny silver bells

You Will Not Be Played

not again, anyway

Throw It Away

2009-03-03T17:05:00.000-08:00

listen...

"Sets Appeal" or "Got Heap?"

2009-01-18T11:17:00.000-08:00

"Einsteins's Riddle", (there is serious doubt that he was actually the author), is similar to the type of logic problem you see in LSAT, GRE, and GMAT. It's a nice reference problem because of it's popularity and familiarity(plus , it sounds soooo much more important to solve "Einsteins's" riddle). Can this riddle be solved using semantic web technology like OWL? Let's see -

THE RIDDLE -

1. In a street there are five houses, painted five different colours.
2. In each house lives a person of different nationality
3. These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage, smoke different brand of cigar and keep a different pet.

THE QUESTION: WHO OWNS THE FISH?

HINTS

1. The Brit lives in a red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The Green house is next to, and on the left of the White house.
5. The owner of the Green house drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the centre house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbour who drinks water.

So, we're going to solvethis with OWL -

When we translate this into an OWL problem and turn on the inferencer (I'm using Pellet 2.0.0 with Protege 3.3.1) we get:

Notice that the fish lover is in the German set. So, that is the answer, and is the correct one (for this version of the riddle; there are variants, but essentially the same)

Sometimes, it is interesting to see how a solution type solves a problem, even if it is not a "practical way". You get a sense of the limitations of the solution type (expressitivity - is it awkward for this type of problem?, efficiency - what's the time complexity look like? or space?, etc.) and you get a sense of the what is different about this solution space. After all, each solution type gets the answer - how are they related? how are they different?

Simple forcing strategy:

There's an old saw in computer science that says: "There are only two problems in computer science: naming things, and cache coherence" -

Naming things - we just pretend we know by "naming" - for example, I know who lives in the yellow house - "Owner_of_the_Yellow_House" - that's who...

References (man who drinks tea, for example) are assigned to individuals, e.g. individual: Tea_Drinker)

From this you get:

Person_in_the_SecondHouse, Person_in_the_ThirdHouse, Person_in_the_FourthHouse, Person_in_the_FifthHouse, Person_in_the_FirstHouse, Norwegian, Owner_of_the_Blue_House, Dane, Brit, Swede, German, Cat_Lover, Blends_Smoker, Water_Drinker, Owner_of_the_Green_House, Owner_of_the_White_House, Owner_of_the_Red_House, Owner_of_the_Yellow_House, Horse_Lover, Dunhill_Smoker, BlueMaster_Smoker, Dog_Lover, Beer_Drinker, Bird_Lover, Fish_Lover, Coffee_Drinker, Milk_Drinker, Tea_Drinker, PallMall_Smoker, Prince_Smoker

Cache Coherence - where we force things to take on traits based on their set (guilt by association)

We take the simplest type: consistency.

Each individual from above is equivalent to one of the five: swede, norwegian, brit, german, dane. We now define properties that allow us to enforce the constraints via functional relationships. For example, rule 6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds. is encoded by defining a property called drinks, with domain = person and range = drink.

Then the individual: PallMall_Smoker drinks Milk.

These are the easy ones to see. About 2/3 of the way down they start getting a little more obscure, like rule 10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.

But this is still the same thing actually. We define a property: lives_next_to (by the way, it has sub-properties lives_left_of and lives_right_of) and it's the same thing:

individual: Blends_Smoker lives_next_to Cat_Lover.

Finally, we have to embed some geometry about (ordered) houses, like the each house has a max number of neighbors = 2, and that the center house is house 3 and the first house is house 1 and so on. We also have to distinguish the first and last houses with some defined sets, since we want the inferencer to use them as a point of reference. This puts classification in the drivers seat, and allows us to see how a world dominated by primitive set theory and simple classification operates with respect to the types of problems this riddle represents.

The OWL file is at the bottom of this post, so you can go there to see a complete list of constraaints etc. Better yet, bring it into your ontology browser and play with it (I used Protege 3.3.1 browser and Pellet 2.0.0 for the inferencer)

OWL will infer that two individuals y, z are identical (sameAs) if f(x) = y and f(x) - z.

So relations will force some indiviuals to start pairing up.

In addition, there is a musical chairs thing going on with the sets representing each nationality.

There are 6 times as many individuals as needed (5 traits for each nationality = 6 traits and 5 indiviuals) we have 30 - but they have to pair up into 5 without violating the rules which are:

EquivalentTo:
({Brit , Dane , German , Norwegian , Swede})
and (lives_next_to min 1 owl:Thing)
and (drinks exactly 1 owl:Thing)
and (keeps exactly 1 owl:Thing)
and (smokes exactly 1 owl:Thing)
and (lives_next_to max 2 owl:Thing)

This "forces" individuals to pair up with a "true" individual (sweded, dane, etc.) as well.

So these sets are the 5 chairs and the individuals run around trying to find someone sitting in a chair that is missing their part (pet, tobacco, drink, housecolor, etc.) -

There are lots of problems like this - and we have this mechanical approach now -

For each clue, assign an individual. Define constraints through property restrictions and set inclusion (e.g. simple set theory) -

Record facts through indiviual property values.

Turn on inferencer and enjoy.

Scalability is bad - true - but for modest problems, like.....guess what this is -

individuals:

owner_of_knife

last_viewer_of_file

victim

assailant

driver_of_car_leaving_tire_prints_#a14-789-22

etc.

What type of problem does this represent?

Why do we test for the ability to solve these?

We can think of it as jigsaw puzzles within a bigger jiggsaw puzzle.

This technique of using lots of individuals to solve a problem is fine for a machine or something that can keep track of lots of relationships - like a neural net or relational database or even nature. Sets scale poorly unless there is a corresponding increase in parallelism. Nevertheless, we just want to see what happens in this world, not necessarily, apply it.

If we change the "substance" from hypotheticals from the real world to a semantic world, then things change in utility. For example, we can think of each instant of history as an individual that is equivalent to some part of the future - we can talk about how much of the information endures in the next ensemble of information. Each moment then is an instance of one set of conditions and each of these has a relationship to other moments in other places and at other times, new "prime" individuals will rise up over time: democracy, fascism, tolerance, intolerance, new modernisms, and so on. Past moments will try to assemble themselves into the new individuals or eventually die out.

We can assign an individual to each subject or object from the facts, and a property to each verb (or action word) - record all of the conditions and constraints and then infer about soundness -

The main point is that we (or any agent that wants to) can mindlessly assign individuals to big messy problems and see why we get the answer we do.

Anything that is a "mystery" with "clues" can be solved this way....does your life have "mystery"? Do you have any "clues"?

Once we know that certain types of problems can be solved by assigning individuals to each "clue", clues start looking different.....and so do individuals.

Grand deduction sometimes has to give way to gritty detailed deduction, where everything is an individual - like you or me.....every clue, every piece of the puzzle, assigned to an individual with properties, looking for a chair before the music stops......

more on all this later - for now, here's the OWL:
(*NB* you'll have to replace zttp with http - I had to do this to avoid google constraints)
--------------------------------------------------------
# Base: zttp://www.ndfa01.com/ontologies/EinsteinRiddle-3.owl#@prefix xsd: {http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#} .@prefix default: {http://www.ndfa01.com/ontologies/EinsteinRiddle-3.owl#} .@prefix rdfs: {http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#} .@prefix rdf: {http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#} .@prefix owl: {http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#} .
default:Person_in_the_SecondHouse a default:Person ; default:left_of default:Person_in_the_ThirdHouse ; default:right_of default:Person_in_the_FirstHouse .
default:Beverage a owl:Class ; owl:equivalentClass [ a owl:Class ; owl:oneOf (default:Tea default:Beer default:Milk default:Water default:Coffee) ] .
default:Cat_Lover a default:Person ; default:keeps default:Cat ; default:lives_next_to default:Blends_Smoker .
[] a owl:AllDifferent ; owl:distinctMembers (default:Bird_Lover default:Cat_Lover default:Dog_Lover default:Fish_Lover default:Horse_Lover) .
default:Horse_Lover a default:Person ; default:keeps default:Horse ; default:lives_next_to default:Dunhill_Smoker .
default:Milk a default:Beverage .
default:Person_in_the_FourthHouse a default:Person ; default:left_of default:Person_in_the_FifthHouse ; default:right_of default:Person_in_the_ThirdHouse .
default:Pet a owl:Class ; owl:equivalentClass [ a owl:Class ; owl:oneOf (default:Dog default:Fish default:Horse default:Bird default:Cat) ] .
default:Horse a default:Pet .
default:Norwegian a default:NorwegianClass , default:Person ; default:lives_next_to default:Owner_of_the_Blue_House .
default:PallMall a default:Tobacco .
default:drinks a owl:ObjectProperty ; rdfs:domain default:Person .
default:BlueMaster_Smoker a default:Person ; default:drinks default:Beer ; default:smokes default:BlueMaster .
default:Blends_Smoker a default:Person ; default:lives_next_to default:Cat_Lover , default:Water_Drinker ; default:smokes default:Blends .
default:Owner_of_the_Green_House a default:Person ; default:drinks default:Coffee ; default:left_of default:Owner_of_the_White_House .
default:Blends a default:Tobacco .
default:keeps a owl:ObjectProperty , owl:InverseFunctionalProperty , owl:FunctionalProperty ; rdfs:domain default:Person ; rdfs:range default:Pet .
default:Dunhill_Smoker a default:Person ; default:lives_next_to default:Horse_Lover ; default:smokes default:Dunhill .
{http://www.ndfa01.com/ontologies/EinsteinRiddle-3.owl} a owl:Ontology .
default:Dog_Lover a default:Person ; default:keeps default:Dog .
default:Prince a default:Tobacco .
default:Owner_of_the_Blue_House a default:Person ; default:lives_next_to default:Norwegian .
[] a owl:AllDifferent ; owl:distinctMembers (default:Brit default:Dane default:German default:Norwegian default:Swede) .
default:GermanClass a owl:Class ; rdfs:subClassOf default:Person ; owl:disjointWith default:BritClass , default:NorwegianClass , default:SwedeClass , default:DaneClass ; owl:equivalentClass [ a owl:Restriction ; owl:hasValue default:Prince ; owl:onProperty default:smokes ] .
default:Person_in_the_FifthHouse a default:Person_in_the_LastHouseClass , default:Person ; default:right_of default:Person_in_the_FourthHouse .
default:German a default:GermanClass , default:Person ; default:smokes default:Prince .
default:Dunhill a default:Tobacco .
default:Water_Drinker a default:Person ; default:drinks default:Water ; default:lives_next_to default:Blends_Smoker .
default:Person a owl:Class ; owl:equivalentClass [ a owl:Class ; owl:intersectionOf ([ a owl:Class ; owl:oneOf (default:Norwegian default:Dane default:Brit default:Swede default:German) ] [ a owl:Restriction ; owl:minCardinality "1"^^xsd:int ; owl:onProperty default:lives_next_to ] [ a owl:Restriction ; owl:maxCardinality "2"^^xsd:int ; owl:onProperty default:lives_next_to ] [ a owl:Restriction ; owl:cardinality "1"^^xsd:int ; owl:onProperty default:keeps ] [ a owl:Restriction ; owl:cardinality "1"^^xsd:int ; owl:onProperty default:drinks ] [ a owl:Restriction ; owl:cardinality "1"^^xsd:int ; owl:onProperty default:smokes ]) ] .
default:BlueMaster a default:Tobacco .
default:Bird a default:Pet .
default:Person_in_the_FirstHouseClass a owl:Class ; rdfs:subClassOf default:Person ; owl:equivalentClass [ a owl:Class ; owl:intersectionOf ([ a owl:Restriction ; owl:cardinality "1"^^xsd:int ; owl:onProperty default:lives_next_to ] [ a owl:Restriction ; owl:hasValue default:Person_in_the_SecondHouse ; owl:onProperty default:left_of ]) ] .
default:Beer_Drinker a default:Person ; default:drinks default:Beer .
default:Tobacco a owl:Class ; rdfs:subClassOf owl:Thing ; rdfs:subClassOf [ a owl:Class ; owl:oneOf (default:Prince default:Blends default:PallMall default:BlueMaster default:Dunhill) ] ; owl:equivalentClass [ a owl:Class ; owl:oneOf (default:Prince default:Blends default:PallMall default:BlueMaster default:Dunhill) ] .
default:left_of a owl:ObjectProperty , owl:InverseFunctionalProperty , owl:FunctionalProperty ; rdfs:subPropertyOf default:lives_next_to ; owl:inverseOf default:right_of .
[] a owl:AllDifferent ; owl:distinctMembers (default:Beer_Drinker default:Coffee_Drinker default:Milk_Drinker default:Tea_Drinker default:Water_Drinker) .
default:Owner_of_the_Yellow_House a default:Person ; default:smokes default:Dunhill .
default:Owner_of_the_Red_House a default:BritClass , default:Person .
default:Dane a default:DaneClass , default:Person ; default:drinks default:Tea .
default:Swede a default:SwedeClass , default:Person ; default:keeps default:Dog .
default:lives_next_to a owl:ObjectProperty , owl:SymmetricProperty ; rdfs:domain default:Person ; rdfs:range default:Person ; owl:inverseOf default:lives_next_to .
[] a owl:AllDifferent ; owl:distinctMembers (default:Milk default:Beer default:Water default:Tea default:Coffee) .
default:Tea a default:Beverage .
default:Coffee_Drinker a default:Person ; default:drinks default:Coffee .
default:SwedeClass a owl:Class ; rdfs:subClassOf default:Person ; owl:disjointWith default:BritClass , default:NorwegianClass , default:GermanClass , default:DaneClass ; owl:equivalentClass [ a owl:Restriction ; owl:hasValue default:Dog ; owl:onProperty default:keeps ] .
default:Person_in_the_LastHouseClass a owl:Class ; rdfs:subClassOf default:Person ; owl:equivalentClass [ a owl:Class ; owl:intersectionOf ([ a owl:Restriction ; owl:cardinality "1"^^xsd:int ; owl:onProperty default:lives_next_to ] [ a owl:Restriction ; owl:hasValue default:Person_in_the_FourthHouse ; owl:onProperty default:right_of ]) ] .
default:Bird_Lover a default:Person ; default:keeps default:Bird .
default:Fish_Lover a default:Person ; default:keeps default:Fish .
default:Milk_Drinker a default:Person ; default:drinks default:Milk .
default:Beer a default:Beverage .
default:Water a default:Beverage .
default:smokes a owl:ObjectProperty , owl:InverseFunctionalProperty , owl:FunctionalProperty ; rdfs:domain default:Person ; rdfs:range default:Tobacco .
default:Brit a default:BritClass , default:Person .
default:DaneClass a owl:Class ; rdfs:subClassOf default:Person ; owl:disjointWith default:BritClass , default:NorwegianClass , default:GermanClass , default:SwedeClass ; owl:equivalentClass [ a owl:Restriction ; owl:hasValue default:Tea ; owl:onProperty default:drinks ] .
default:Fish a default:Pet .
default:Dog a default:Pet .
[] a owl:AllDifferent ; owl:distinctMembers (default:Blends default:PallMall default:Prince default:BlueMaster default:Dunhill) .
default:NorwegianClass a owl:Class ; rdfs:subClassOf default:Person ; owl:disjointWith default:BritClass , default:GermanClass , default:SwedeClass , default:DaneClass .
[] a owl:AllDifferent ; owl:distinctMembers (default:Blends_Smoker default:BlueMaster_Smoker default:Dunhill_Smoker default:PallMall_Smoker default:Prince_Smoker) .
[] a owl:AllDifferent ; owl:distinctMembers (default:Cat default:Dog default:Horse default:Bird default:Fish) .
default:Prince_Smoker a default:Person ; default:smokes default:Prince .
[] a owl:AllDifferent ; owl:distinctMembers (default:Owner_of_the_Blue_House default:Owner_of_the_Green_House default:Owner_of_the_Red_House default:Owner_of_the_White_House default:Owner_of_the_Yellow_House) .
default:BritClass a owl:Class ; rdfs:subClassOf default:Person ; owl:disjointWith default:NorwegianClass , default:GermanClass , default:SwedeClass , default:DaneClass .
default:Cat a default:Pet .
default:Person_in_the_ThirdHouse a default:Person ; default:drinks default:Milk ; default:left_of default:Person_in_the_FourthHouse ; default:right_of default:Person_in_the_SecondHouse .
[] a owl:AllDifferent ; owl:distinctMembers (default:Person_in_the_FirstHouse default:Person_in_the_SecondHouse default:Person_in_the_ThirdHouse default:Person_in_the_FourthHouse default:Person_in_the_FifthHouse) .
default:PallMall_Smoker a default:Person ; default:keeps default:Bird ; default:smokes default:PallMall .
default:Owner_of_the_White_House a default:Person ; default:right_of default:Owner_of_the_Green_House .
default:Coffee a default:Beverage .
default:Person_in_the_FirstHouse a default:NorwegianClass , default:Person_in_the_FirstHouseClass , default:Person ; default:left_of default:Person_in_the_SecondHouse .
default:Tea_Drinker a default:Person ; default:drinks default:Tea .
default:right_of a owl:ObjectProperty , owl:InverseFunctionalProperty , owl:FunctionalProperty ; rdfs:subPropertyOf default:lives_next_to ; owl:inverseOf default:left_of .

High Bridge is No More

2008-05-27T20:07:00.000-07:00

KING OF PRUSSIA, PA (March 27) – The Gay Street/Route 113 Bridge in Phoenixville Borough, Chester County, is scheduled to close Wednesday (April 2) for the construction of a new bridge over French Creek, several local streets, railroad tracks and the former Phoenix Steel site, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) said today. The new bridge is scheduled to open in early 2010.

High Bridge is No More

High Bridge is no more

there is no way to

the other shore

Their churches

and lawns

are what they were

without me.

Already, the green

shoots jump to fill

the gap.

Goodbye, Wheel

I thought it was the poignancy of

"my life"

but realized

it is

the poignancy

"of life"

What are the ways things can happen?

pi-calculus

What kinds of things can happen?

UTM

It's UTM's all the way down.

Are you waiting for someone on T.V. or NPR or whatever to tell you this?

pi-calculus -> collaborative behavior -> self-collaboration

subsumption -> self-description -> reflection

propositional calculus - > rules -> inference bootstrap

predicate calculus -> FAS -> UTM -> Solomonov (Godel) Machine

Spring is Eternal Hope

2008-03-20T16:13:00.000-07:00

The vote is in and it's.....

Euonymus!

Springchime (video)
--------------------------------------------

I hear people say things go from bad to worse:

Bad things go from bad to worse.
Good things get better over time.
Good is good.
Bad is bad.

----------------------------------------------
UYWME (music)

Invisible Banks

2008-02-02T11:32:00.000-08:00

On Polo's birthday, the Khan gave a great banquet. After toasting Polo and bowing to the greatness of his "invisible" empire, he looked out over the vast crowd of people he had assembled. "Bring me the highest from every temple and every palace in every Khanate!", he ordered. An Army of Captains, heard, and obeyed. "Now bring me the lowest from the lowest places." And so, it was done. One by one, the highest and the lowest of every land, every race, every tribe, every group with a name for "me", came forth, the lowest on one side and the highest on the other. They stood facing each other; philosopher and philistine, artist and liar, the free and the guilty; every manner of high and low, good and bad, gifted and depraved. The Khan, looked at Polo with the recognition of a thousand ages, beaming with righteous pride . He raised his great arms in his robe, like a silk butterfly, and addressed the infinite "equals" sign stretching before him. "Heal each other.", he whispered. Then, he and Polo, disappeared into the crowd.

Moe, Curly, and Alonzo Church

2008-01-30T22:42:00.000-08:00

Ah, linear time
the Clementine
the fine
dine
on
Every day;once a week;
once a fortnight; once a quarter;
whenever necessary; and it always IS
Fear makes thought impossible
eventually
-----------------------
Language lays like a gauze
on bodies torn to bits...
of responsibility;
warns the ready
with its hollow snare
------------------------
Thought, beautiful thought
light of the soul;
to untangle the lies
to see what is there
to feel it with
mind
It is the blue-bird at the top of a tree
it is the snowtop
it is the liberator

Sublime

2008-01-17T21:48:00.000-08:00

Click them to see full size....

What you see is what you get!

2008-01-10T16:22:00.000-08:00

From Harvey Krumpet in four dimensions
FAKT # cis pi/4
If you test for particles, you get particles.
If you test for waves, you get waves.
(corollary - people who don't answer surveys, don't show up in survey results....)
------------------------
From Dr. Doolittle's Terrible Secret (a fictitious book)
"How many dimensions do you think you have?". Dr. Doolittle was waiting for the badger to answer, when the horse said: "Three". The pigs nodded as though elevated by the erudition of one of their students. All of the animals began to recite facts about volumes, and areas, and mass, and coordinate systems, and such. The Owl, quite pleased with himself took the arrow from the weather vain and illustrated vectors in space by flying around with it in his talons; saying: "Now it's pointing this way and is this big", holding his great wings out just long enough to show the magnitude. The animal academy was simply percolating with rational certainty. Doolittle held his hand up and waited for them to recognize him. "How old are you?", he asked, and walked back to the house, not waiting for the answer and the blank stares. He dared not ask these same questions at the supper table.

------------------------

An Attainable Freedom

What freedom can I seek

and show good faith seeking it?

I can live my life in earnest

as the work of art that contains

all other art

I can live my life as

a living poem

and being such take the scorn

It is not theirs, but their masters'

My temples throbbing

I am free to understand this

--------------------------------------------

If you like

Impostors contaminate the mind

they foster re-appearances

Trust broken by mankind is

taken to heart

little by little

person by person

We never forget the impostor

One by one, hands are withdrawn

and the ones that remain
are sure to be broken

When will we all be artists?

2008-01-09T18:19:00.000-08:00

If the Arrow and the Target Never Meet

If the arrow
and the target
never meet,
the rocks will not be
turned to sand
leaves will not turn red
and paste themselves to wet
sidewalks
If the eye is not caught
things will not be repaired
justice will mean nothing
children will go hungry
hints will become dark irony
If the tiniest beam of light is ignored
all things will end
hollow talk, cruelty, and hypocrisy are
all that will remain
WHen will we all be artists?

Category Theory is sometimes called the topic that studies the social life of objects. So what's the deal with this neighborhood and its surrounding links? (I know it's a social network question, but what is this?)
Calvino, Beethoven, Scriabin, Chagall, Chekov, Dostoevsky, Zuse, Turing, Minsky, Markov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Godel, Kipling, Gide, Rothko, Escher, Coltrane, Miles, Monk, Dolphy, Mingus, Parker, Lester, Tatum, Melville, Cummings, Heather McHugh, Solomonov et al, Queueing Theory, Stochastic Processes, Dynamic Systems Theory, General Systems Theory, the Polish brothers, Kubrick, Wem Wenders, Werner Herzog, Bukowski, Pynchon, Gide, Ravel, Zen, Bill Evans, Jarret, McCoy, Pharoah Sanders, Complexity Theory, life as art, life as art.

Beautiful Pain

2008-01-05T22:12:00.000-08:00

...and when they saw us;
saw how we lived; they called it
beautiful pain

Breathing

Breathing....
I see butterfly
orchid
thistle
superposed
Breathing....
I see ice crystals
White flowers
I see sidewalk
rolling under foot
like waves
Breathing....
I see faces
I hear voices
and feel more
than I know what to
do with
------------------------

Here's a little improvised piece called Butterfly-Orchid-Thistle Superposition #2
http://www.archive.org/details/Butterfly-orchid-thistleSuperposition2

Chairy

2007-12-31T12:59:00.000-08:00

I expand from within as the pressure
outside goes down
Most of it is predictable now
The chair in the corner looks
at me like a platypus
What will it be without me
to see it with that half sardonic Duck grin
It's like Pee-Wee's playhouse
here sometimes
Nature abhors a vacuum

A Christmas Carol

2007-12-25T12:57:00.000-08:00

Dickens gave us one codification of the suffering of the poor. He made them humble and noble and we have institutionalized this schema of compassion. You can even buy gold plated, limited edition, castings of scenes from a "Christmas Carol" if you want to flaunt your ability to separate sign and signified.
Years ago, when my son joined the cub scouts, I agreed to be a den leader. That Christmas, we took a list of addresses given to us by one of the churches, and took toys and food to the homes on Christmas eve. Most of the homes had a single mother and kids. Sad little dark places with measly trees or no tree at all. A lot of the women were ashamed, like they had done something wrong - made their kids lower somehow....it was bad enough they had to live like this, but we shun the poor, we take away their dignity, we are suspicious of them. "I mean, how screwed up do you have to be in this country to not be in the middle class?" - We love our aristocracy more than the lords.....
But this is all too easy to see. It is just one of the vast abstract billboards warning everyone that we are if nothing else as a species, egregious liars!
All over the world today there are great reunions, fine dinners with good will and love. There are homecomings and traditions kept alive and so much symbolism. All of this is marvelous. There is also the disunity, the disjunction; but it isn't the caricature of Tiny Tim or clean, hard working, noble peasants; it's 1 million women and children homeless in America, today. It's the jump in suicides this time of year, and the people who have slipped through the cracks. It's the preoccupation with doing the best for our own and how that group is constantly shrinking. It's the suspicion and psychologically antiseptic position we take with all of the strangers who are potential con artists, pedophiles, verbal abusers, bi-polars, gamblers, fatties, smokers, druggies, sci-fi nerds, players, haters, stalkers, voyeurs, cell-members, moles, demons, microbes, infectious agents, liabilities, .... ad nauseum -
Out of all the millions of strangers living alone and not invited to a good old fashioned Christmas dinner, how many were real threats? How many suicides this season would not have occurred if a single act of kindness had been shown to a stranger.
We used to think Chauvinism was bad. How Chauvinistic is it to go to the level of your own DNA?
Maybe all Dickens really did was let everyone off the hook? We can all say, "such a shame", and keep going.
Once compassion becomes an unwise financial risk, it becomes ritualized and ridiculous; more for the compassionate actors than the audience. We can pretend all we want to, we can set aside special days for kindness or love or gratitude, and put it in our scheduler, and do all the right things, like a huge heartless machine grinding beautiful ideas into porcelain nick-knacks.

The Role of the Observer

2007-12-23T13:57:00.000-08:00

This looks better full size - click it

The Role of the Observer

The world is my blog

I keep it going by

noticing

things

and leaving

comments.

Here alone

by myself

I keep on

noticing

and making

comments;

silently;

anonymously.

The individual is nothing but

possibility;

there is no real identity but in

another's heart.

That's the role of the observer.

The White Wailing

2007-12-22T11:42:00.000-08:00

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
- Shelley

Siddhartha Retreats

Who threw Pip into the sea?
Was it thee?

Strictures make the crime
make the irony
of itself
It is inevitable

Who sent Pip down below
to know much more
than he should know?

Says the Whirlwind:
"Speak your judgement, and it shall be"

Dilute in the vastness of it all,
what drove Pip mad;
the deep,
or innocence?

Volunteered Slavery

2007-12-15T12:56:00.000-08:00

May the better man win

Some of us began to wonder
at the Colliseum
looking up each day
to see how well we'd done
Were they proud?
Was our day passed?
We began to wonder; who are
they and who are we
down here?
There is the lion
and there is here.
-----------------------------------------------------

This is deeply distrurbing.
I'd almost rather see the devil running the world.

The Flame

2007-12-14T17:04:00.000-08:00

The Flame

I have no rituals
but I ritualize
a name
a face
a feeling
possibilities
symbols;
my mind's hand
touching, exploring
with its fingertips
absorbing
I can't give it up, or, I won't give it up;
I don't know which

Thank you god for You Tube!!

2007-12-11T21:20:00.000-08:00

I'm influenced by Princess Haiku and flowerville...it feels good, I'm lighter....

I have always loved Fela Kuti; his music and what he stood for. I have listened to "Army Arrangement" over and over countless times. I had the same experience with "Are you experienced".

So periodically, I check, and there it is

If you've never heard him, you are in for a mind-blowing treat!

First, some info about Fela

In 1977 Fela and the Afrika 70 released the hit album Zombie, a scathing attack on Nigerian soldiers using the "zombie" metaphor to describe the methods of the Nigerian military. The album was a smash hit with the people and infuriated the government, setting off a vicious attack against the Kalakuta Republic, during which one thousand soldiers attacked the commune. Fela was severely beaten, and his elderly mother was thrown from a window, causing fatal injuries. The Kalakuta Republic was burned, and Fela's studio, instruments, and master tapes were destroyed. Fela claimed that he would have been killed if it were not for the intervention of a commanding officer as he was being beaten. Fela's response to the attack was to deliver his mother's coffin to the main army barrack in Lagos and write two songs, "Coffin for Head of State" and "Unknown Soldier," referencing the official inquiry which claimed the commune had been destroyed by an unknown soldier.

Over a million people attended his funeral. He died of AIDS.

Here is the incredible video!

Watch

I couldn't live without italics

2007-12-11T15:54:00.000-08:00

There is nothing not
understood;
only misunderstood.
Everyone understands everything.

Does it matter how different
the answers are?

Bridge Street

How could a name conceived
with such utility
now carry so much imagining?
There is a nostalgia here
for steel.
There is a nostalgia here
for luck.

There are faces in my floor -
These are all from my bathroom floor with no processing. The blue is color distortion from a cheap digital camera (or is it?)

Heart of a tree, butterfly, ripples in a pond...?

Look Ma, both hams

2007-12-08T14:15:00.000-08:00

How to improvise with both hams
Don't imagine bass and right hand
Imagine bass player and piano player
Don't imagine bass notes and piano notes
Imagine dialogue
It's not the hand, but the
arm, that makes them different
One that walks the beat
One that sees what it can get away with
-----------------------------

Pray to Be
What can we pray for
and show good faith
to have it answered?
We can pray to be;
to be fair, and generous;
honest and open; to love;
even the impossible; especially
the impossible
We can pray for the will
to carry out our best intentions
We can pray we are not ruined
by strife or bad luck;
to lose our prejudices
by the bundle
To see the hand that moves
when we move
to cut the strings
To ask a thousand terrifying questions
every day
To be afraid
but not live in fear
To be new, but not naive
To stay in our seats
for the whole movie
and never look away
We can pray to be the answer
to another prayer

What can we then hope for,
and show good faith?
To be loved for
what we pray to be.
---------------------
Hey Ike, here's a cool contemporary string quarted called Ethel, maybe it will help stop the voices...
Be careful, string players jerk their heads around a lot

Oh, and Ike - here's that Chet Baker stuff you were wondering about...

Check out this cat's face - he's been around....

Now, IKE - here's a real treat.....three masters at work:
Van Morrison, Chet Baker, and Steven Sondheim - excruciatingly beautiful, I know that's your diet Ike - nothing but meat...

More music for you Ike -
Comfortably Numb

------------------------------------------------------
Groan-ups

You say Truth, Beauty, Love, God;
these things are for children
What have you instead
with your relaxed jeans
and ball caps and running shoes?
You're still JUST dad trying to be cool
and existential like
It's the same old cynicism
of least action for the heart
of way more answers than questions
authoritative like
You live without myth? That's the adult way?
Shame.

Phoenixville

2007-12-04T16:50:00.000-08:00

There is only one Phoenixville

High Bridge stretches like a

great cat arching its back

toward the sun

What is on the other side

I barely know;

different churches

different rights and wrongs

different things that make them smile

We come to this side, to be reborn;

but first, to finish burning.

I have seen death leaving the station

as I was coming in

and thanked it in my new mind

but that was before

The Sunflower has been cut for winter;

layed out on the grass to melt away

Everything around me has

died or disappeared

and still...

no sign of ash

What will this one be like, what have I learned?

Death precedes birth but they are one and the same

in the limit.

The flame is worth the fire if you're honest.

Don't count on now.

There really is only one Phoenixville.

2007-12-03T16:09:00.000-08:00

Who am I to teach?
Who am I to say?
Only of the things
I'd go back and change
Only of the things I wish
I'd learned sooner
Only to wretches worse
off than me
Or those that, like
me, will soon be

Who am I to be this self-documenting
experiment
To fill the already full with me?

This is deliberate;
you think naive?

Study the coincidences
read them like a book

If there is one allegory then all
is allegory
If there is survival of the fittest
there are also better generations
If there is one love
then all is love
Death is the
absence of love
not breath

--------------------------------------------------

Egocentric religions and belief systems

So many religious, ethical, metaphysical/spiritual belief systems seem to be in terms of the gains for the participant.
Be good, you go to heaven, your prayers are answered, ...
Think positively and you'll get what you want, it will be attracted to you, ....

We could just as easily include, slit a chickens throat, mix the blood with toad slime, ...., and you get, whatever you desire

People then try to balance the equation subject to the constraint, they get whatever the big payoff is - they can say, "I can't help that man, it's against the law, if I break the law, I'll go to hell." The greediest for deferred rewards of course are the most pious, they have huge investments to protect - mansions in heaven -

There's not much in popular culture about trying to become good with no thought of rewards or punishments. Even Buddhism gets contorted into some final payoff.
Suppose you could be overjoyed every time you could help someone. You'd have a constant source of joy.
How is it that self-interest has become so pervasive?

If you are conned often enough
on the great road
you will stop trusting strangers
there are only strangers after this

If you are lied to often enough
on the great road
you will look for the
truth behind what is being said
there is only deafness after this

If you are cheated often enough
on the great road
you will learn the value
of things
there is only commerce after this

If you suffer often enough
on the great road
you will come to
love simplicity

Cycletherapy and Cycletherapists

2007-12-02T10:35:00.000-08:00

Oh Gawd! He's doing it again!

He's warm, and funny and bright for a while

and then, cold, dark, silent

He's cycling! Look, he's cycling.

Quick, call a Pharmacist!

It's spring

--------------------------------------------------

Salv: So, what is time then?

Simp: It is what is measured by a clock.

Salv: And how does a clock do that?

Simp: It's quite simple.

He opened a clock to show me

Simp: See this gear? It turns this gear, which in turn turns

these two gears, which in turn, ...

Salv: Ah, but why those gears, in that way?

Simp: Why to get the right time.

Salv: And if there were no clocks?

Simp: We wouldn't know what time it was.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Everything profound is circular; tautology

Everything meaningful is choice

Survival for that which

must compete is obvious

Detachment from that which is

bound to pain is obvious

Everything important is obvious

Here's the choice:

The infinite joys of this world;

Are they worth the wheel of it?

The holy choose the middle way.

Middle of the road, is peaceful.

The profane choose the dust

of the road.

There is enough futility here

to make distractions seem

like wisdom

Then there are those of us

that choose the flame

We learn to keep

the losses to

ourselves

We nail the chosen

self

hide and all

to the sky

We learn

to weave ourselves,

in time.....

Materialism is Hell

2007-11-30T17:42:00.000-08:00

I have nothing to say and I am saying it
- John Cage

Conditions to be me

Everything in this world

can be replaced with

something else,

except me;

that's what it means

to have an identity

But you can replace us

one and all

with something else

someone else

High trade

And, when am

I, you?

After all, I'm only

a number

-------------------------------------

What do you see?

I must use words like
information and entropy,
un-poetic words
(to some)
This world will not go back to grazing
on the beauty in our eyes
We must see enlightenment
In what is here
now
like it was done before

The music of our poetry must
be Stokhausen or at least Hindemith
or Schoenberg;
not Schumann!
This new wine can not be served
in mimicry
Mimicry is nothing now

We can no longer
ignore numbers

Question reality seeing
it digitized

What your eyes saw
is not real

It's that easy now
That easy now

For Christ's sake! It is not
the physical mountain that is
sublime!

------------------------------------------

What could be worse than the circular argument of Darwinian purpose for human beings. Kill or be killed? Survival of the fittest; and the most preposterous, our purpose is to perpetuate the species.

To be dumped in with all the other animals, because we share traits in the physical dimension is hell!

Living the life of a wildebeest with the consciousness of an angel - what a cruel fate of nature! Not to even be treated like a human - abhorrent - it makes me shudder!

Quite simply, the fact that the Darwinian competitive model explains the physical behavior of the survivors, is simply stating that the traits that help the next generation survive will be evident in the survivors. This has nothing to do with purpose. It simply states that in a competitive environment, the survivors will have traits that help them survive. It is self-evident.

Now if we start off by saying that we can be explained completely in terms of physics and biology, then of course, death is a physical, biological, event. Dead dog, dead child, dead whore - all same.

But you can't prove there's nothing after death by starting with the assumption that we are only physical - this is circular.

How can we know what's after death for us; humans - with charities, and poets, and village idiots and mardi-gras and churches and universities and good will and funerals? Socrates showed this over 2000 years ago. It is in the definition of death.

There is some part of all of us that thinks it is eternal. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. It's a maybe though.

So what are you are going to stake your life on? Try being an animal for a day. Don't dream, don't feel compassion, don't feel a oneness with the world, don't appreciate the privilege of consciousness; try!

If you choose to believe you have the same fate as every other beast, go ahead, but then don't whine about it!

Keep your hell to your self.

Indra's Net

2007-11-29T18:40:00.000-08:00

Knot Theory
Once there is the first connection
it cannot be stopped
connected to connected
in combinatorics unfathomable
Reflection upon reflection

The great deceiver and the
greatest deceit are the same

Deliverance is the true death

Not the deaths that only grow
and colonize
Not the deaths that stop the heart
Not the gun to the temple
Not any path that ends in meat
Not to light and cold
and judgement or
harted or
lies
Not to greed or anger
or murder
nor sentiment
the true death delivers

Two Rods Off

2007-11-18T10:32:00.000-08:00

Genius is the activity which repairs the decays of things, whether wholly or partly of a material and finite kind. Nature, through all her kingdoms, insures herself. Nobody cares for planting the poor fungus: so she shakes down from the gills of one agaric countless spores, any one of which, being preserved, transmits new billions of spores to-morrow or next day. The new agaric of this hour has a chance which the old one had not. This atom of seed is thrown into a new place, not subject to the accidents which destroyed its parent two rods off. - Emerson (the Poet)

Two rods off

Entropy Increases

The whale
the dead letter clerk
the confidence man
and the ambiguities
These are the ages that repeat

What noise the ear makes
What light the eyes
What silence the tongue speaks
There is but one revelation
and it will burn the world
to its foundations

Heart of a Tree

2007-11-13T15:11:00.000-08:00

On the side away,
lie the clay vales
where things are formed.
We are given to the harp
and the hammer,
entrusted with so much
more than we know.

How the knife cuts

2007-11-12T17:54:00.000-08:00

They show me pictures
of my brain
They say, there you are eating
there you are frightened
this is aroused
This is how it works
They say
here you are playing the
piano
see, the musical part of your
brain is active
and the part that controls your arms and
hands
they are active too
Notice that your emotional and memory regions
are also very active
"Really, I didn't know that."
"So, what was I playing?"
Scriabin
"So, is that Scriabin's brain?"
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Do you count? I don't count.
I used to count.
Now I don't.
Every day, more things count,
they add up.
I don't add up.
Every day, more things to spread attention
to.
I don't spread
I am a lump
waiting for
diffusion
to do
its job
---------------------------
I am so happy to be an American
citizen. I live in a country where the only
two problems left are smokers
and fat people
Fortunately, they die pretty quick
but they use up a lot of health care dollars
Why not get the Chinese hooked on our cigarettes
and food and help them with that population explosion?
I should have been a diplomat.
-------------------------------------
I think, maybe I've gone to too many contests
I keep thinking, "what's my angle?"
I think, maybe I went to the Colosseum
too much
I keep looking for that thumbs up.
I should never have waited in line
---------------------------------------------------------

I Will Vote For You!

2007-11-10T15:07:00.000-08:00

Oh, the allegory
of mementos
mementos

the revulsion
of the mixed
metaphor

as though daily
life was not quite
good enough

and,
if truth is not
obscure
but obvious
obvious

where then
is its
novelty?

The rarest things
go to
collectors
It is good
there are not 10,000 Picassos

(recycled music)

go on, click it

Great! Dividends!

2007-11-09T14:40:00.000-08:00

Eventually, we only had seconds
for each of a thousand things
We buzzed like insects

j1 + j2
-----------------------------------------
there is something in the
fabric of this punishment
familiar
mindless, yes
but bundled with
what I have discarded
as mistake
to see in the warp
of your woe
the woe you've
caused
the unbearable cliche'
listen as you become
indistinguishable
in the muffled background
of despair
-----------------------------------------------

Experimental Error

2007-11-08T21:31:00.000-08:00

Evgeny Kissen

Tangerine - you asked for him playing some Scriabin, well, here he is, as Scriabiny as you can get. I can't wait to see you use it in your act.

Scriabin Op 8, No 12 - Evgeny Kissin

Hey, Mitch, Judith, "Hombre" - you gotta check this out - it's old decaying film stock, accompanied by a piece called Decasia, by Michael Gordon. The scenes are from a long time ago (hence the decay) - and the decay effect is unpredictable and nuanced. Mitch, I know you'll dig it -

Anyway, here it is.

Decasia (excerpt)

Greg Lynn - The Thinking Architect; I love the term - another example of the design to machine paradigm being reapplied via UTM (computer if you must)

Lynn

Parveen Sultana - Beautiful

--------------------------------------

It could have been a lot worse.

It can always get better.

It can always get worse.

No shit?

I'm out of butter.

There are people that have never tasted butter.

I burned my hand.

You have a hand.

On a scale of zero to infinity,

everything is nothing.

And I alone survived.

It could have been worse.

Actions speak louder than words.

Everyone is, someone else.

Something is always better than nothing.

Half a religion is better than none.

Half a heart is better than one.

You have to carry your weight;

like columns of air.

Them's the rules.

THe tigHter thE nOOse, tHe STroNgER the coNviCtiONTHe tigHter thE nOOse, tHe STroNgER the coNviCtiONTHe tigHter thE nOOse, tHe STroNgER the coNviCtiONTHe tigHter thE nOOse, tHe STroNgER the coNviCtiONTHe tigHter thE nOOse, tHe STroNgER the coNviCtiON

Dead man walking

2007-11-08T15:49:00.000-08:00

The next time the Khan comes, I burn Moscow.
The next time I see three in a row
I jump
I have outgrown
my life
The next time the wheel comes
I crack
The next time the owl hoots
the candle dies
and the cat leaves
I'm checkin' out.
--------------------

Tomorrow, I will be a quantum resonator. I will encode,
everything that has happened to me, every memory, every perceptron state
change.
Shine a light through me and see
the ME-bius transformations.
I will be a mindful resonator, not the
crocodile I was today.

---------------------------------

What is the difference between causality and correlation? We make no such distinction in programming. They are the same. Except - - the real causality: the fact that EVERY TIME this bit is set this way, and this bit is set this way, and, ....., and this final bit is set this way, every time it is exactly like this.......
tHIS HAPPENs!
but not exactly causality,
because
thiS HAPpEns! could happen too
------------------------------------------

And who is to blame for all your troubles? Why, your comrades.

This new religion of yours,
"Diagnosis"
how's it working for you?
Are you happier now?
Deeper, cooler, sexier, wiser,
better off?
Follow the time rivers.
Where does all this attention go?
Who benefits?

THis new religion of yours,
"Looking good"
How's it working for you?
Feel confident now, do you?
Yeah, you look great. You must work out.
Do you mind if I
just have a
look
in your
mouth?
(Do you have papers?)

This new religion of yours,
"Work"
Feel worthy yet?
Pulling your own wait?
How's that layaway life working out,
when do you have it payed off?
------------------------------------------------

The guy is talking about his Home Theater. The consumer version of what movie stars and other people at the top have. Everyone chimes in, talking about special cables, and how much they cost, and how elaborate and expensive it is. It gets all mixed up in my head. Did someone say something about an Asp? No, I don't know what it is like to shit gold. Gold dust when you wipe, that must be very elegant. Blue cables on the left, orange down the middle, through the beam, but that's where you put the ambient speaker. I see the puppeteer's feet below the stage. The masks fall and I see old men crying. And on their faces:
grey line
connected to
grey line
wired together
for this sad, sad,
play.

My blog is going to save the world!

2007-11-07T23:04:00.000-08:00

Something not to do if you're me:
Tell yourself you can have a piece of candy
if you'll go down stairs and get a pack of cigarettes
then when you get there and go over to collect your candy
you say: "Tricked ya", and laugh one of those dismissive little
snide laughs. Even though it's you, it still makes you feel like shit.

-----------------------------------------
Am I homely and pathetic?
Yes!
Am I embarrassed, humiliated?
Yes!

But I am not ashamed.
Loneliness wears away at you.

It is
so convenient
to compress everything
into one thing:
Money
Did I say money? I meant Power,
I mean
Slavery.

I write to con. I sell my self.
I sing the body
of the body.
My 15 meg of fame -
They'll make a movie of my blog
I will wear a uniform
and a have a giant wallet
I'll be on TV, and everyone will be in my blog

My blog is going to save the world!

Why else would I write this nonsense?

From Russia with Spite

2007-11-07T15:57:00.000-08:00

Today, I told a Russian colleague, "I don't care about that any longer, I have adopted the Russian heart." Some other culture might be offended, not these Dostoevskians - "spite drives the man", Divine Spite - EVERYONE grows up in Russian, no matter where you are. Everyone is tragically disappointed, having to spend their whole absurd lives getting a good overcoat - that's all it amounts to - the purpose of life? - subversion: while wasting your life on what "they" want you to do, read a good book, and get drunk. You routinely stick "of course" in front of every negative. Of course I have a flat tire, God is shitting on me and laughing. Of course they didn't hire me, I am gloomy. It's the middle of winter and the boiler is broken; "Of course it is. I understand. Look, I expect naw-thing. Do what you will, I will keep going. Freeze me! I will paint, type, compose, complain, my way into your living room. I will gnaw my way into your heart. I have the heart of a dog. I can survive anything!
I love the freedom it gives me, the anger it replaces. Once you get used to being angry, it comes, the Russian heart.
When I told him I had adopted the Russian heart, he smiled that Russian ironic smile: "You see now?........Now you know." It is a beautifully evil smile.

Correction: The Paradox of "Consumer" Choice

2007-11-06T15:07:00.000-08:00

Really interesting short about Ryan Larkin, talented Canadian Animator. The CGI by Chris Landreth is very sophisticated.

Link -> Ryan

Animation by Chris Landreth (very heavy cat....)
, based on "Disregard this play", Link -> Bingo

Lovely metaphor for how something can be incomprehensible in one view and simple in another. Link -> Moebius

Here is one of those Google Techtalk videos, where they bring in special speakers to keep the Google stuff up to date. This talk, by Professor Barry Schwarz is called "The Paradox of Choice" . It deals with "overchoice", analysis paralysis, and so on from a sociological standpoint. One of the lemmas is, "Everything suffers from comparison."

There are a number of excellent quantitative studies showing paradoxical effects when the number of choices increases.

The habitus is that consumer choices determine happiness. Of course, the consumer prefix is left off. The other bit of habitus is that this "bad comparison algorithm" is treated as inevitable. when in most cases it can be easily relaxed with 19th century mathematics. Futhermore, there is no analysis from either an operations research or information theoretic basis. What optimizations are avaialable, e.g. is there in an optimal strategy nevertheless? How many choices are pseudo-choices, what is the sensitivity of satisfaction to the overall expectation? Could this be a sign that we expect too much from THINGS?????????????????

On another plane, this sociology speaks of inevitabilities based on highly specialized sampling. This is no more inevitable than students not knowing how to do calculus until it is taught to them.

The real problem, of course, is that if business defines everything, including happiness, consumer choice is all that matters, because, like all Darwinian creatures, you are a consumer.

On the other hand, art doesn't suffer from comparison, nor anything sublime. WE DON'T WANT OR NEED TO POSSESS THE TRULY VALUABLE - WE DON'T WANT OR NEED TO POSSESS THE TRULY VALUABLE - WE DON'T WANT OR NEED TO POSSESS THE TRULY VALUABLE - WE DON"T WANT OR NEED TO POSSESS THE TRULY VALUABLE...

"If they can make you believe absurdities, they can make you commit atrocities."

Maybe it's time to take the reactor off line........

.....

............................Nope -

Watch the video - if it applies to you - look at the domain. It only applies to things that require selection. What if you don't take the gambit - opt to like Picasso and Raphael incomparably.

Link -> Paradox of (Naive) Choice

-----------------------------

Watch out for that one, she

has a calf, they'll go after her

for sure. We must have calves

we protect the young

That one is ill, it won't live,

let it die for us now instead of tomorrow

That one is old, they will take it last, it is dead

already.

Move away from the ones that will go first

except the calves

Move away from her

her son has problems

she'll draw the sharks

she needs help

move away

He has a drug problem

she has a hormone problem

he's on prozac

she's on anti-depressants

he's a narc, she's bi-polar, no I meant BPD, he's one of them,

she's not like us, they smell different, he hates women,

she has Baron Von Munchausen by proxy

(but he actually is Baron Von Munchausen!?!)

It's in their nature -

they scream, but it don't mean nuthin'

it's what they do.

if I give an inch they'll take a mile

I ain't budgin' - not an inch - cuz they'll take a mile

they won't budge an inch, not even 1/8 of an inch, crazy....

he has baggage, she has sensitivity issues, they're not right for each other

she's too smart, he's arrogant, they have no talent, that's incurable

With the proper combination of drugs and therapy, this is correctable

Fill the meaningless void with cosmetics - drive the wedge in deeper for them

here's the a-priori -

Pain means anger.

Misunderstanding brings pain, brings anger.

Anger brings pain.

Perfect.

<<>> - "I" am going to change my chemistry - I'm going to SCARE MYSELF! >>

The recollection of the tides of fortune in Uncle Vanya

that is not poetic drama

that is depression

Myshkin, Buddha, Roquetin, Bartleby; the lot of you,

chemistry

Tchaikovski - chemical

Scri - chemical - abin

Don't even bother with Dali and Van Gogh -

Picasso, different, he met the president didn't he?

More Kitsch suggestions....

2007-11-05T23:56:00.000-08:00

Why read my stuff instead of Whitman, or Emerson, or any other great transcendentalist? Or, skip the niche and just read good poetry instead of my ravings. Here's what we unofficial poets say: Read our sometimes amateurish, sometimes cliche'd, sometimes pretentious, writing, to know that the average person also feels the need to write poetry. That we too can feel some exemplar rising in us. Read it to know you live in a society where regular folk still write poetry, play the piano worse than Horowitz, sing worse than Callas. We want it to be personal. We know there are usually much better things to read than ours. There are much better things to spend your time on, but they won't give you the same comfort you will get knowing some of your neighbors still write poetry, play the piano poorly, and croak out a song once in while that makes you cry with us.
--------------------------------------------

Who is it - ?

Who but you
could know?
One being, so many people,
so many windows,
so many doors.
Being, I don't care where you live,
as long as you're there;
with your windows and doors
wide open.

--------------------------------------------

Who but you
could know
that I can not say
anything but what
you have said?
That I have never said
anything but what you have
said?
Who but you
could see it here?

I'm not asking for
it's meaning,
we know that's up for grabs;
but you do see it don't you?

--------------------------------------------

Another one of those blogs where the guy goes crazy

2007-11-05T12:26:00.000-08:00

OK - this thing has obviously turned into something different than I intended. It was going to be didactic, and apply modern reasoning methods to the plight of the world - make things better. A real scientist or engineer could do this. But I am neither. It is much easier to be a hack poet, and throw all the other types of metaphors in the same drawer, since, not much is expected of a hack.
So, site changes.....
well, I can no longer be StonedJwaysByKways. The idea was sort of like I am muti-dimensionally stoned; stoned on messing with my chemistry, my knowledge, imagination and words, and of course, consciousness.
But I am not up to it. I'm simply too dumb and lazy to be that stoned.Trying to do that did change me though. When I was in high school, back in the 60's, there was this famous kid. He had eaten way too much acid and never came back. He, should have been a junior, but he was in 8th grade. Sometimes, he would just take off running. He wasn't stupid though, he was just in his own world. He hung out with 11th and twelfth graders as if he were one. He just lived in his own world that sort of overlapped with ours. We were very proud of him.
I'm that famous kid now. I don't understand anything anymore. I can easily confuse a G minor 9th chord, with a black and white photo. Words change into other things, thoughts change into other things. It's like all the "Glass Bead Games" at once. Instead of a Godel machine, it's a meaning machine, cranking out every possible string of meanings in parallel, each one bit different from the next, longer and longer proteins of meaning. See what I mean, there really are proteins of meaning. There really is semantic Brownian motion turning our gate into a drunk walk. I have to remind myself when I work; "that component is not a chime, control statements are not amino acids."
This clicking feeling under my fingers, it is the keyboard of my computer, it is not my piano, .....
When I am driving; this is not a painting, if you smash into someone, someone could get hurt, at the very least there will be tedium, something you have to do.
So - Lost In Symbols, that's the new me. I am sure I'm lost and I'm sure of nothing more than symbols.
J-ways by K-ways? I hadn't gotten so far on K.
More than likely, what you'll be able to see here is some sort of pathetic unraveling of sanity as defined by the great "Blue Book" on humans. The hammy death of K-Mart personality. (even that; think kitsch, hammy death of a K-mart personality? makes that cow shaped creamer look like a Michaelangelo)

In some other world, "60 Minutes" has a man on, whose mind is perfectly normal, they have traced this back to the structure of his brain. You can see the source of the disease and the REASON he acts that way.

Teacher, why does this passage mean that?
Because, foolish child, "A" is like an arch, it points up, and in this case is followed by a space, so the first word, is "A". Now for the second word, ......

Lost in symbols - I just string them together - if you ask me what they mean, I'll string together another group - "I laugh alone in a dark house" - I say what I want - I talk to my stairs -
I am a micro-performance artist - I am the fool unwinding himself in stutters -
I am obscure, I am anonymous, I am of no consequence. YEA!!
I will say what I want!
Send people here to feel better about themselves. "Look, his punctuation is like a hillbillies teeth. The more he smiles, the worse it gets."
"Why does he post this? Why doesn't he have a life. So sad." -
I want to exercise my Russian heart (since I can have anything (worth wanting) I want). I revel in being a dog. I will press my face against the glass, and you can continue eating. Ask the Maitre d for a different table, it will only encourage me.
I don't apologize.
In my lunacy, what makes sense; is. I can have what is worth having. Everything else, I will not get. That is how I will get over desire. The remainder, I will give, for spite.
Watch how I disappear.

I will not suit up today
I will not clean my weapon and load
it and make sure I have my bayonet
I will not defend my self today
I am going to whistle
I am going to stand naked in the middle of the
battlefied
and whistle.

-----------------------------------------------------

To someone somewhere sometime

I appeal to two groups in particular
but don't want to restrict any other
if you can be of help.
To the first group:
You are all the other me that branched
off into a slightly different universe.
First off, I hope you are doing well.
Listen, we should all get together and
see if there is some way of "pooling" our wealth
you know, I would certainly do it for you.
My world is pretty bleak. I'm running out of time
and (I hate to admt it) I still don't think it was worth it.
Everyone is so busy and afraid in my neighborhood.
I should be, but you know how we are. So, any of you got
any ideas? If you are me, and in a universe with this blog and
accidentally bump into it, recognize me. OK? Do something if you
can. Read all about my troubles and give me a hand.
I'll do the same for you, I'm always on the look out for someone like
us that justs needs a little encouragement. Thanks.

Second group:

You are something like an archaeologist in some other world or future world.
It's trivial for you to enhance reality for people. Make it easier for them to drive it. You will
detect my blog in some sort of archaeological sifter. You will say, look what we have here,
a silicone age man painting on the walls of reality. Poignant. Let's fill in some of the blanks for
him. As you know, I live in an age of waste, because we don't understand what is precious. We left the old gods in place and just rearranged the religion. Wall Street, Madison Avenue, Chernobyl, you know, you're a scholar. You will know this is not a conceit. This is not the first you have found in your sifter. Maybe you are laughing, because, you have already started doing that. I admit, I am funny here, and must be funny there too. I'll look - I do think there have been some things that are too unlikely to be called anything other than at least a simple structure; interesting coincidences. I hope you know what I mean.
I'm the kind of brute from the silicon age that works with it. My Faust, needs a process, an interlocutor, a sentient agent. As you know, we started using applied AI during my age. So I don't need answers, I need someone to talk to. That's what I'd trade my soul for. Poignant eh? Maybe there's a movie about you, where you run into this guy from a long time ago, and no one knows how to communicate with people this backward, but something about him. You start feeling like you know him and identify with him and feel compelled to help him by breaking through, finding the rare algorithm. Maybe you don't have movies that corny in the future. Maybe this is just more "Ubi est Gaulia" (bet you haven't heard that one in a while). If so, sorry, any crumb will be appreciated.

-----------------------------------------------

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,

And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

- Donne

The derivative of a quadratic is linear, but the derivative of an exponential, is exponential.

2007-11-04T18:47:00.000-08:00

What makes life so desperate that it makes "art"?

What makes life so desperate
we forget to make it art?
Maybe habit.
Maybe we were on the
clock too long.
Maybe we were too
cold, too hungry,
to notice anything,
for too long.
Maybe the kids
sitting in the tub
thinking, "only I exist",
are all born into the wrong family,
and have to adapt.
Maybe the traffic drowns it out.
Maybe it is the endless misunderstandings
that keep us from learning
language.

Maybe it is the instinct to only pay back
harm, even if only to ourselves.
Maybe if one thing eats, all things eat.

Maybe no one encourages us (no one has the guts).

Maybe we are not supposed to -
Maybe we are supposed to work like animals
until we die, a "waste" of art,
and otherwise,
a waste of time.

Alright, who said meow?

2007-11-04T10:24:00.000-08:00

There's another old saying that's popular among veterinarians, "If you put a cat and a bunch of broken bones in the same room, the bones will heal."

How you catch a cat

Yes, three proper men out of five

will throw things at a cat, and every

proper dog will chase it up a tree.

Who can it trust?

No one normal ever had fun watching a dog suffer,

(How many ways are there to skin a dog?)

Who ever thought of hanging dogs over a clothes line by

their tails?

The cat is so light under all that

fur

The skeleton seems so delicate

It is the contraption

of the cat

that makes it suffer

here

Those claws, those teeth, those

eyes

they make it hard to

sympathize

with this

tiny predator

Some cats

have been tortured by

children,

with the devil in them,

those cute faces

mean nothing now

Cats don't walk on their paws

they walk on their claws

they're the only ones

If they want to feel something

they have to pause

and withdraw

the claw

This is how you catch a cat:

First, you have to have something the cat wants,

something that appeals to its instincts;

like its curiosity or

its need to pounce.

But you will never know for any single

cat

what it takes to get it

to cross that boundary

between its world and yours

Not in a million years

So, you have to troll

to catch a cat,

to get past all the claws

and teeth and fur

and smallness

underneath

and bad blood

between our species.

Set our a lure.

Make it unusual,

cats like things that are weird.
(I had four black kittens that would

pounce on a piece of black shag carpet;

each time, jumping straight into the air,

over and over again,

like a kitty fountain)

The lure should have a lot of unpredictable

motion, cats get bored easily, they are sceptical.

For some cats this will be enough,

rarer cats will take rarer lures.

Then wait.

Some cat will come, it will let you pet it,

be it's friend.

It will get past the claws

and teeth and fur
and smallness
underneath
and bad blood
between our species

and withdraw

it all

Review Time

2007-11-03T14:45:00.000-07:00

Given a computable phenomenon P:
The Kolmogorov complexity is the length of the shortest program that simulates P.
Solomonoff complexity is the probability of guessing the shortest program.
Chaitin's Omega number is the probability that a random program will halt on a universal turing machine.
Schmidhuber's uses time instead of space to get rid of the nasty compuatability problems.
That's the three layer cake. With Schmidhuber frosting.

This is all about machines being able to make intelligent inferences and predictions given past data.
Data of course can be programs or anything else we can encode (digitize).

These are measures of complexity though. They are not complexity, any more than a liter is gasoline.
What is interesting in a loosely metaphysical way is:

Although every computable phenomenon has a Komogorov complexity, it can not be computed.
Although Solomonoff's method for generating hypotheses from prior data is optimal it requires the calculation of an incomputable number.
Chaitin's Omega is called the number of wisdom because it encodes all mathematical truth, but it is once again, impossible to compute.
Schmidhuber seems to get around all of this by swapping space for time. (Wouldn't it be interesting if space was cheaper than time?)

Consciousness was found in a machine some time in the future of our imaginations.
We thought it was a trick. We turned it on and off when we felt like it, but it was very convincing.
Unfortunately we were not.

The more interactions there are, the more complexity there will be.
Complexity means there are layers.
Complexity is easiest to study by simulation.
Complexity takes time to understand.
Complexity requires diversity.
Daily Life is complex.

2007-11-03T14:07:00.001-07:00

Oh, words!
After all the obedience
we have given you;
in our songs,
our laws,
our beliefs,
our solemn oaths;
now that we are all listening;
did someone forget to tell
you what to do?

(Just in case)
"Words!
I command you;
Find your mark!"

-------------------------------------------------
History

When we first woke up
we had to realize how the world
worked again.
In those first few instances,
we can't remember whether
the things, "out there", are coming
from
our eyes or
to them.

Then we remember optiks.

Now we are awake
Like new umbrellas

------------------------------------------

In spite
I gave what I wanted
the less I got the more
I gave
In spite

But then I fell for it
myself

This is what desperation does
for you
It makes you do things
you wouldn't do

So what are the things
you wouldn't do?
Not because they are wrong or foolish,

Have you given
what you wanted?

Will you again?

-------------------------------------------------

They thought we would eventually tire of figuring out how everything worked without wondering why it worked. But we did not. Eventually, the saints, lost their patience.
First, a child noticed a cloud shaped like a WWI ambulance. Others looked up. Out of it stepped e.e. He was as big as the sky. When he spoke, the whole world heard him.

Out of the prisons rose a million Doestoevskys.

A sea of Melvilles flowed into the diamond mines, the gold mines, the goal mines, all mine, all mines.

Car radios started playing Beethoven and Coltrane.

Everyone had an uncle named Noam and an art teacher named Chagall.

Finally, Nietszche appeared on every T.V., every channel, every cell phone, every IPOD.

"Did you think we were our bodies? Stupid people, now you see. Now you must listen."

This really took a lot of the fun out of it for the saints, but it had just gotten so goddamned irritating!

-----------------------------------------------------------

I Make Bargains

I can trade one thing for another
I can take a book that's not well written
if it is profound.
I can take a book that tells the
same old story, if it is well written.
I can trade passion for unpredictability
or beauty for trust
I can love Picasso with the best of them
and trade him easily for a real Crow.

I make bargains, I arrange,
so that it is always the same thing,
found, again and again.

Cast it absurd,
in your world
without meaning,
that uses it anyway,
that uses it anyway.

What would I trade for that?
Why, nothing.
---------------------------------------------------------

Lost in Symbols

2007-11-03T00:16:00.000-07:00

We are lost in symbols

They speak on

their own

behalf

We have forgotten this

We believe they are our voice

we, who say, we don't believe...

------------------------------------------

I remember the first time I saw a rainbow made from oil. It had rained, and some of the puddles in the road had oil floating on the top, like it does, and caused a circular rainbow pattern to appear on the surface, like it does. I couldn't believe it. It felt like "free toys". I couldn't stop looking at it in amazement. I didn't know anything about refraction, or the oil, or anything like that. I just saw a rainbow in a puddle.
I had a similar experience, when I was older, in my grandpa's pickup truck. There was a piece of costume jewelry or something, that acted as a prism and split the light into the same rainbow of colors. Most people have seen something like this on a sunny day when the sun is at just the right angle. Seeing the inside of his beat up old truck, bathed in rainbow colors, felt like some divine gift. I was overwhelmed with profound feelings of reverence. It seemed like, extra.

What's the difference?

2007-10-28T22:15:00.000-07:00

Why say things this way
or that?
What is the difference
in what they enact?

What's the difference
in the keys?
What difference
is the harmony?

Why this fact?
Why this inference?
What are the words
that make a difference?

What is the same?

Bored? Try something impossible.

2007-10-28T11:26:00.000-07:00

Miles is playing 'Round Midnight, I am looking at the words I wrote next to Rothko, "One thing leads to another". Rothko said: "Silence is so accurate".

Something happens to you when you listen to a lot of Miles and Coltrane. You hear what couldn't be beaten out of these men. You hear the truth that holds up against the ugly they had to deal with.
When the house is silent and I move like a ghost from room to room, snowed in, cut off, I forget the warmth that can come from music.

Each of us writes our own story in our minds. We say the words, we make it so. In the end, will we be liars or wiser?
Honesty is humiliating, but dying a liar is dying in vain.
-------------------------------------

So much of what we admire comes from oppression. The great existential journal hidden under the planks, not to be read, but written to be read. Who is it that sits on the other side complacently expecting flawless prose, a proper address, canto.
Can we move our memos to the top of the pile by being clever, profound, omniscient, eternal?
What god is it really, that has the rules? That expects sacrifice? What god is it really, that is vengeful, that collects foreskins and alms? Whose law hangs the murderer? Whose judgement makes it so? What voice can not be stopped when there are: sPelling erRors - uh-oh, comma, uh-oh, comma,.....
Whose voice interrupts yours and makes you doubt your own instincts?
Whose voice is so loud that nothing else gets in?
But this god has swallowed sand, already sick with Miles, Thelonius, Burroughs and Ginsberg, Dolphy, and Freda, and Socrates, and Pierce, and Nietszche, and Dostoevsky, this god can not stop the derelict sacheing about in his girlfriends pink running outfit, can not masse' the MFA onto what it is like for a kid to take a shit in the woods.
This god, no matter how brazen it is, can not choke the experience out of life with grammar and style.
For all of the fine attractions: the neutrino exhibit, the Louvre, the three body problem and two-phase commit and tensors and commuting diagrams and buzz of PDEs and latest Vegas act with one man synchronizing a re-enactment of the entire Civil War using life sized puppets; this is not a miracle. These are the possibilities, these are the props. Only one god can make the miracle of perception reach for the right brush.
To move these gods to action, away from the current, away from the easy fiction that is always believed - away from platitudes and cliches -
This god is predictable, it is the mind of the rancher, breeding stock.
Winter makes for judgement, for ranking, for reassuring lies.

Must every wrong have a villain, must the mobs judgment be so low?
What is at the heart of revenge, of anger, of malice?

Imagine motive and you'll find blame.
Knowing motive tells you nature.
Knowing nature, makes the crime
fit the punishment.
----------------------------------------
In 500 years, we would tire of it all, the scripts, the unavoidable betrayals, the pretense of it. In 500 years, we would see the physical world as a broom.
But like all con artists, it does not stay long enough for you to catch it in a lie.
It can only hide the words: "If we don't have em read it now, they never will. But they won't understand it, they're too young. Make them understand it. "

"There now children, you have read Moby Dick."

In 500 years we would see it as moronic.
-------------------------------

There is only one miracle, and that is in the imagination.
It is only the imagination that makes the choice between so many truths.
Out of all of the things the world could be, it will be this one.
Out of all the reasons not to choose, I am choosing this.
Knowing it is a choice is the heart of freedom.
Knowing what to choose, takes art.

------------------------------------------------------

If you want to know what is possible, try something impossible - "petition the Lord with prayer".
"To know you are not alone...." - that is the echo, that is the refrain.
---------------------------------------
When will we tire of the flawless performance?
We sit like Kings and Queens in the concert halls watching one they found for us with talent.

When will we all be artists?

2007-10-27T21:45:00.000-07:00

In here, all that is useless is burned up. Each day I am confronted
with my own hypocrisy, my own deceptions. Each day ruined by
my own ignorance, my own prejudices. I cower, I make excuses.
I forget my complicity.

You would not have seen it.
You would have to
have read my mind.

Why must there be the other?
Why do I simply wait?
Forty years in the underground have made me a hodge-podge.

It is unbearable, but it is fair.
If you love fairness, it is fair.
If you love desire, it is fair.

I must know this pain.

2007-10-27T15:46:00.000-07:00

I am like a dog. Once pet, I want more petting. Once loved,
I will wait in the cold as my dog heart goes on beating. See that
dog, tied to the fence at the train station? See how he looks at you, see how my dog heart scrounges?
See how far I have fallen; one of the cats, knowing where the good stuff was; to this.

I am the cargo cult. I am the beggars hand.

Can a dog, really know abandon? Fortunately, no.

I do tricks, I pant. "Did anybody see that? That was pretty good." I look around the station. Maybe she realized she can not live without me, and has come back. She is stepping off the train now and will run up to me and put her arms 'round my dog neck. But yes, it would be later, when the house is silent and she is alone with her memories, that is when she will be overcome, and run out of the house, and straight for a ticket. No, she'd wait, it will be tomorrow, not enough time has passed. "Wait, did that person stop for a second?"
Love and sorrow have turned me into a dog.

If only I were a great man instead of a dog, then my story would mean something.
If only it was a war that did this. Something with stature. Instead, I am a dog, with the rain outside and the trees turning yellow, something I had looked forward to seeing as a man.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Inquisitor: You would agree that seven out of ten things matching is much more significant than seven out of a thousand, wouldn't you? But when you see fifteen or sixteen things match up, you take it as a sign, you assume it is not fifteen out of a thousand or a million. You want it to be a miracle. That would be your miracle, not God's.
Your losses are like everyone's, they are every day - go to the hospitals, or the flop houses, or the bus depots. This is no Helen of Troy, you are not Paris.

This is here.

2007-10-26T21:24:00.000-07:00

The bindings slip, the brittle pages
fall out in my hands.
Everything is putty
or stone.

This is that place where the compass spins;
where memory and experience are one.

All that I have had, is a mystery, to all but me.
Fate by way of history has made it so.
Economics, has made it so.
But I remember - hedging bets, being greedy, giving up, from cowardice.
I remember, deals with the devil.
Then history started again.

I did not change a thing. I have only moved through here
on my way to a cowards end.
Knowing I am a coward, I look for strength.

If I can not be brave, I will be stubborn.
I will be or I will sit.

/I can still be brave, behind the lines.
/Who took these things from me?
/Who am I at war with?
----------------------------------------------------------
Habitus

Habitus: the state as parasite; hidden by its gargantuan implausibility;
hidden by
the dirty dealings
only we
know of.

Habitus: the great excuse; the absolution of personal responsibility.
Habitus: to wash away the homeless; to not know about Africa; to shoot a man for stealing.

Habitus: our conspiracy of silence.
Habitus: the cynic's choice, the efficient ontology.
Habitus: the ghosts of our primitive ancestors.
Habitus: the double cross.

I will be ridiculous, I will hope for the moon, I will be derivative and mediocre, I will
let myself be measured with those ridiculous instruments.
If a book can be written, so can a life.
I know what I have decided. Now, I wait for compassion.

-------------------------------------------------------

In my final moments,
I want to see yellow leaves
in the rain
and listen to Scriabin.

I want to smell Cherry tobacco
and eat gooseberries,
and live in a tent in my pajamas.

When I go, I want it to be like leaving a dear friends
house. No visit last forever.

And on the way home, I want to remember every fine
detail of the evening, I want to know that I was there,
forever.

2007-10-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

Honestly -
We tell our lower classes, sorry, people in the food services, or accomodations or ... they are important and then abandon them, give them second rate educations, feed them fairy tales they live vicariously or practice mindlessly, we tell them they are important when we don't know ourselves.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Ladder of Disgust

If the Checker can not be on its own square, where can it go?

The peasant has a cat's soul. It does not go to school, it does not need help,
it has no particular talent. It gets by on its style and its cunning.

The peasant has the heart of a dog. It is simple and loyal and long suffering. It will wait, in the cold, for you, and come to you on three legs if need be.

Is the cat, a cat, because it can not be anything better? Who ever thought such a thought?

Inside the Castle, they are spoiled, it is natural. They have not wasted the grander things
on you. They have ranked all things and dispensed accordingly.

And so, at your funerals, in your bars, in your rest homes;
the lottery ticket, the bingo card, the visitor's badge; the fairy tale you'd tell a horse
before you shot it.

2007-10-25T23:19:00.000-07:00

Prince Myshkin; Joseph Necht;
Pierre;
your gods had a weakness
for irony.
You were their apostles.
Tell us now, what really happened.

----------------------------------------------------

where left and right are naught

and there is only inside -

There can be no separation, too much is shared:
poems on the walls,
paintings in the
windows.

When the air is
thick with Turpentine and Mercury vapor,
it is only pain
that must be known
(in absolute time),
And when it's known
then that's another time.

The staircases see this. They hear him cry out in the dark. They see him in his palsey, shaken 'til his teeth rattle.
But they have not heard him say those words, those tragic words;
the ones that silence the whirlwind.
For this, they have decided they will not make him stumble and fall, no matter how lop sided his use of them is. They look at him and say, "He is too pathetic to hurt."

After this, he didn't take them out of obigation any more, he wanted to make them happy, for them to feel his feet on their steps. When he was at the top or bottom of one of them, he was swept away by their beauty as they lay themselves before him. Warm gratitude and love, that's what he started feeling for them.
They made a pact; he would see their beauty and love them for it, and they would not kill him, no matter what, (at least for now).
-------------------------------------------------------------------

2007-10-25T18:57:00.000-07:00

I dreamt

I dreamt my hair fell out.

I dreamt my teeth fell out.

I dreamt my hands shook.

I dreamt I was layed open

and left to die.
I dreamt "me" too, seeing it,

and being afraid.

2007-10-25T16:21:00.000-07:00

Condensation

Stone Walls;

read my words!

Read what I have written on you.

Stone Walls;

you must take pity

or laugh.

Stone Walls;

I speak to you!

Know my story, Stone Walls.

I will wait,
but read my words!

Monkey Politic

2007-10-25T14:48:00.000-07:00

I am bored of the appearance:
the turned down cards,
the noblesse oblige.
Look, I come in my pajamas,
I have toilet paper stuck to my shoe, my fly is open, there is something between my teeth, my pants have come down.
I am tired of grammar, and spelling, and punctuation,
as clues.

I will grunt my grunts, unedited but in the soul,
and be done with grace.

I will not rehearse to be.

I will take down the imposing door.
I will write in my human hand,
for the record.

I am tired of avoiding the shame
of being human.

2007-10-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

On what physic rests your
conception of
self?

What law to be kind, or honest?
What momentum is it that hurls us
into memory?

Yet, I, in the molecules ...somewhow,
am.

Only one of the selves must be meaningless,
dying with it's name.
Understanding time, as the hunter knows it;
Knowing from the start, where it goes.

The certain void?
Irony is no more inevitable
than getting the wrong answer.

2007-10-23T16:49:00.000-07:00

Inclined, as it were, to excess,
excess must account.
The inequality can not know this place.
Meaning has lysed,
and symbols tumble out.

2007-10-23T00:28:00.000-07:00

Escher's Place

Up and down the stairs
the phantoms move
their awkward load.
Clumsy with the weight,
they go to work and
to their habits,
and in between,
like anamorphic smudges,
rear their shadow selves.

Descent into the "schlock" of despair

2007-10-22T15:46:00.000-07:00

"Man is a tragic animal. Not because of his smallness, but because he is too well endowed. Man has longings and spiritual demands that reality cannot fulfill. We have expectations of a just and moral world. Man needs meaning in a meaningless world".
----------------------------------------------------

"The immediate facts are what we must relate to. Darkness and light, beginning and end".

- Peter Wessel Zapffe

Okay, here's where the experiment starts to get interesting. What if you see how far into madness you can descend in a controlled way. You can reason your way out of madness, Nash proved that. Imagine something like a madness "reactor", instead of a madness bomb. Let symbols be like the fuel rods you inject to get a controlled reaction. When it gets too "hot", you pull some symbols back to their groundstate.
Of course, the only thing that makes this madness interesting is how gauche and protracted it is, especially with all of the hack poetry and everything else. This may be it's major appeal: the number of things that are done poorly at the same time. You've heard of polymath, call this polyhack - shameless drivel, therapeutically designed to fight off the insignificance of being a polyhack. One advantage: the polyhack is much easier to understand than the real thing. The mirror neurons have to be kept from trigerring the action, but if they are released, what amusement in the flailing. If a fool, then a grande, or at least loud, fool.
The longest and most shameless dance, at the end of a rope, is the one that makes the crowd feel grateful.

The inner (left) house -

Plain as Sandburg,

a bed, a dresser, a kitchen chair,

a wooden floor, bare walls

An elephant stands against its massive door.
This house is out on a limb. It is a chamber. It is a tomb. It is a sarcophagus.

In the sitting room, a night-lite changes colors, neon red, neon green, neon blue, red, green, blue, yellow, violet, white, endlessly repeating the same rosary.

In the darkness of that room, now neon red, now neon green, a

deer with a womans head;
its body

a quiver

of arrows

floating up and down like wings in take-off

red, green, blue, yellow, white.

It is all madness, except in the moment.

"Huck hung himself when he heard about Jim."
"Apparently, Jim finally went back to Miss Watson and allowed his self to be sold off, said freedom was too unbearable lonely."

Countless ways of measuring are on the walls and on the shelves. They can all add to zero or to 1. It depends on the weights, and the permissions, and the logic, and the facts. It depends on the s,p,d,f of it all, and maybe it all comes down to one electron in my brain.

The frog can not help but jump for blue by jumping away from green.

There are the "charming" coincidences, predicted by Ramsey's theory.

If there is (complete) transcendance from the physical, then meaning reigns.
If there is no transcendance, if life is purely physical, then existentialism reigns.
Any philosophy that tries to establish either case is a botch.

If we were immortal
what would we know
after a million years?
We might know that
we forget most of what has happened,
and are but a suggestion to the future.
We might realize that all we ever have
is the moment.

Why must we be immortal in order for there to be meaning?

When the beautiful construction is shown to be a hoax; a corny trick, the workers, that day go home in shame.

Zappfe's four mechanisms:

One hides from the truth.
The lies we tell ourselves.
The distractions from the paradox.
The sublime.

This can be a lie we tell ourselves
climbing mountains.
We climb to climb. And if we should fall,
we will surely die. So we shall climb and think of
nothing else.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I have no need of infinity,
no room for it. I can take this interval
and make it real.
Here is where left and right are naught,
and blind with eyesight, faint of heart,
we pester ourselves with dreams.
Gaze headlong at the possibilities,
and weep.

2007-10-20T19:22:00.000-07:00

In here, the raw abandon of incantation
knows the fire that
runs with it ;
the flames that
leap at night.
It is always there, waiting,

----------------------------------------------------------

My house is conjoined. There are two separate houses, each with a staircase running from the kitchen to the upstairs, and they are conjoined through a central staircase that faces their shared front door.
I imagine these three staircase are very lonely and must be used about the same amount or they get will get jealous. Of course, the most dangerous one, (the steepest), is the one you use the least, especially in the dark. But then, it gets very jealous, and who know what it could do to you if it were so inclined.

-----------------------------------------------------------

My house is pretty crooked. Doors open and shut by themselves. The door to my bedroom, (the lower left kitchen), is kept open with a candle in the shape of a little mahogany colored elephant . It tirelessly presses its elephant brow, against the door, like a real elephant in some ancient palace. When I look at it, I am a giant, going in to sleep in my giant bed, large enough to sleep,.....the sleep of Ozymandias.

-----------------------------------------------------------

My two houses have their own histories with their own secrets. Topologically, there is a Klein Bottle conjoinment between the inside and the outside - left and right have been made naught.
One house, knows the endgame leads to inevitabilities; the other, wants life.
In the limit, information is nothing; simply another random bit pattern. Attention must be ex-nihilo, an act of desperation by the imagination. It must be from within, compulsory, it must be what justifies your net effect.
Outside (right), this is fear; inside (left), this is perfection; indistinguishable in the twisted flute of this space. Newton be damned! Euclid be damned! They describe the machine, not its occupant.
One secret is of shame; for cowardice, deceit, impotence - a child in an old man's body.
One secret is of hope; silly, unbounded hope, for all good things, all fine discoveries, all noble truths.
Cowardice from too good of an imagination. Cowardice from too much harm too early. Cowardice ex-nihilo.

Understand, this is not one house. It is two houses, conjoined, with two occupants. The twist in this space, of course is that they appear as one.

-------------------------------------------------------------

The outer (right) house -

I like the three staircases, they keep me company. I have decorated it to suit my tastes; photo of Coltrane, math and technical equations, photo of Paris, Rothko, Freda Kalo, ....that type of thing.
I play my piano, listen to music, work on software architecture, read, study, write, and so on. I am completely alone: irreconcilably separated, my son won't speak to me, my "soul-mate" left me, I am running out of time, and desire has me in its grip. I have no one to talk to. Anyone who could actually understand me would probably think I was full of shit and everyone else doesn't know what I'm talking about. I separate the spaces.
I have come to this place by luck, destiny, and nature. If I had played the game differently, I might have gotten different results - but maybe not.
I can look at my life a lot of different ways. If my life has been a waste, what did I waste it on? Yeah, there's the usual stuff: my self: vanity, gluttony, avoiding pain, seeking rewards, etc. But, what did I tell myself I was looking for?
1. Total merging with someone romantically - super conscious love - transcendent love - divine love.
2. The QUESTION: How does this work? - reality that is. I've been obsessed with this for as long as I can remember. It's like my consciousness recognizes something other than itself and says, hello, who are you, how do you work? But reality is not just physics, it's the inside worlds. If I am sad, it's just as real as the grass outside. The only real difference is that internal reality changes differently, it's more responsive. What about my perceptions, my explanations of people's behavior, of my own behavior? This is the reality I mean: Whatever is on the other side of consciousness and whatever is in consciousness.
I want access to reality, I want to be able to communicate with it, to know I'll be alright, to understand at least. If I understand, (I hope),I'll be alright.
I must trust the universe. I must believe in the good and see what comes of it. I must not lose heart. My only redemption is to improve myself. I must put desire behind me, it is the source of all suffering; only then will I be at peace.
These are the kinds of things I have to tell my self. An instant later, I am wrenched by the pain of it all, then the wheel turns again, and I can see how I deserve this, an instant later, I am filled with desire - to be mis-perceived in a way that turns me into my better self.
It is a network of meaning, and interpretation is it's vehicle. Nothing important is unambiguous.
RGB is measured more intelligently than we measure a life. Godel, Saussure, Solomonov; irrelevant, in personal life.

I write to justify my pitiful existence. I can see my words, dignified by the font. I can pretend they will be discovered, and me with them.

In the end though, there is but one metric - has anyone ever taken you in?

the wheel turns again.....

------------------------------------------------------------------

The Compulsive Communicators

2007-10-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

David Attenborough's reverent look at "Life on Earth", refers to humans as the "Compulsive Communicators".
What happens to the most compulsive of these when they are isolated from anyone to talk to?
MADNESS

The question is, what kind?
Here's one. It's like a poor man's Second Life. There are two main differences: 1. You have to use your imagination for everything; and 2. (and this is the really rough part) there's no one else, since your imagination, is well, your imagination, if no one else imagines the same things, there you are...
This will surely drive you mad, if you don't have to be mad to begin with to even do it.

I've Gone Mad Checklist
Type: Scientific Madness

Learn just enough science to sound like you know what you're talking about, even to yourself
Discover "invisible world"
Decorate it with technical mumbo jumbo
Get some type of job that gives you some credibility
Idealize your self in that world
Become mysterious and misunderstood (because you're so smart, evidenced by you zero nobel prizes, Ph.D's, etc.)
Write a manifesto
Let appearance go so you can look like a mad scientist
Post it all to your zero-comment blog
Let the beasts have their way or fight to live another day

MANIFESTO - DRAFT

pointer - don't just rant, try to dignify your obsessions with grand themes like truth, beauty, love, and God (prefferable Buddhist)
The allegories and metaphors are not entertainment. They are real.
Everything sings the same song.
Friction teaches us that resistance is everywhere, but that once you get things going, it's easier to overcome it.
The prism teaches us that things are not what they seem, not even light.
"Must there be light to see? What is at the center of the darkeness?"
The sostenuto teaches us that some things need to be left free to vibrate;
and the rodent that bigger teeth always need grinding.

Reality is an intelligence that teaches us about love.
Cynicism is the same as death.
So materialism is the religion for the young, what about the old?.....
"I've got it, make them feel bad about not being young. Sell them age products!"
When we legitamize anyone thinking of us as a consumer, rather than a brother or sister, neighbor, then we become less than human, taking the chains our selves, because they look so good, and putting them on, oursleves.
pointer - it's OK to go overboard on things as long as they relate to your overall delusion.

Things that are computationally equivalent can be transformed into each other.
pointer - make an scientific outlandish prediction, if you're accidentally right, you'll be a profit in the future!
I predict that NP-Complete problems are computationally similar to black holes and will be found to radiate polynomial solutions.

Personal philosophy, religion, ethics, spirituality, aesthetics, and the other elements of individual, personal, CULTURE, have been appropriated by some business or institution. They invalidate our desire to develop these and replace them with "store bought" versions that are easier to market and distribute.
pointer - use puctuation to keep your Manifesto from beoming monotonous, you want your Manifesto to stand out.

Fear -> Lying -> Hatred -> Harm -> Fear
Revenge -> Harm
-> Fear
-> Revenge

Power Corrupts

There is but one moment
There is but one choice

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

YOUR NUTTY SCORE: Congratulations! You're well on your way!
http://www.yournutty.com/ for all of your nut supplies

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Notes from the inner-underground

2007-10-16T15:33:00.000-07:00

What is the variety?

What is the variety of your

thought?

Are there flower gardens of thought?

Are there thoughts like brooks,

or meadows of thought?

Does your thought

have clouds

and wind

and rain?

Are there daring thoughts

and daring deeds of thought?

Are there forrests of thought,

and in those forrests,

are there living thoughts?

Are there mountains

of thought, and lakes, and valleys, and plains

of thought?

Is the extravaganza of it

in there,
with you?

---------------------------------------------------------

Forty years in the underground -

We live in a world of thoughts. We pretend that this isn't so, but we are always thinking. We decide to go to the bathroom at a certain point, we decide to take a bite of potato now, or brush our teeth for this long. We make thousands of decisions each day, possibly each hour. "Who we are" is a set of decisions about beliefs including values, perceptions, and so on. What we want is based on rational expectations, we don't decide to become an olmpic gold medalists at 80 or nobel prize winner at 7. We are constantly trying to figure out theories of who we are and why we feel like we do.

So, let's just accept it; no pretense of "I like to just turn off my mind and listen to music." No mind....no music. Or, I don't want to overthink my life, as if overthinking is even possible.

Let's also stop saying, "it's only words", no matter what the words are. Yes, someone conning you or themselves can say things that don't mean anything. Lots of people can. But lots of people haven't. Is, "I have a dream.", just words? Or Principia, or Zarathustra or the Brothers K? But they are different, you will say. In the hands of a master, we would never say that.

And to the lowliest poet writing for his lowliest wife, the simple, trite words that she can understand; is she forgiven for saying "it's only words".

Beyond that, in the wilderness, where no poetry exists, only instructions, they are still not "only words". "I am somebody" - "I am somebody" - "I must win" - "I am a winner" - "The trick to this task is...." - "No one likes me" - "I am a loser" - "Life has no meaning" ......

It depends on the words and sometimes on who is saying it.

Words and thoughts entangled - Entangling is a nice metaphor for this. There, see, I am pleased with the thought and the word itself......entanglement.

One of the fundamental laws of Cybernetics is the "Law of Requisite Variety". Like all fundamental laws, it doesn't seem to say much until you start applying it to keep from losing your way in the intricacies of what you are studying. One way of stating it is that the solution to a problem has to be at least as sophisticated as the problem. You can substitute complex for sophisticated or go back to original and talk about variability. This is actually the most illustrative way of "thinking" about it. Here are the words:

Variability is the number of different ways a thing can behave. To control something, the controller must have as much variability as the thing to be controlled. The variability of a car is a perfect example. Out of control, it can go left, right, slow down (going up hill), speed up (going down hill), run into things, etc. So, the controls have to have as much variability, aka, steering wheel, brake pedal, gas pedal, gear.

One of the things that is ironic and poignant about our current collective predicament is that the variability that is being "dealt with" all of the time is economic, social, physical, etc. This is not where the maximum variability is for a human being. We can think all sorts of thoughts; imagine complex tapestries of absurdities, impossibilities, possibilities, and beyond, to new ways of imagining. Thought-world is where the real action is. What controls thought world is something inside of thought-world.

Does your "working theory of the world" have the variability of "thought"?

If I show you a pattern like so: 1,3,5; you might see the rule: "add two".

But if I tell you I have left out some of the numbers from:1,1,2,3,5,8,13, 21, ...

Now you say, it's Fibonacci, each the sum of the previous 2, except the first two.

When we make hypotheses, we are in essence controlling a hypothesis process, unless it is a trivial hypothesis, that is, minimal or no uncertaintly, few or no stochastic variables, etc. The hypothesis should have as much variability as the phenomena. If your hypothesis doesn't have the right number of variables, then it is probably wrong. I'm not talking about the conclusion, it may be boolean, but how did you get the conclusion, that's what counts.

Tolstoy depicts this in the "Kreutzer Sonata".

If the right level of variability doesn't exist, you get cynicism: the simplest and most negative explanation. In general, complex phenomena have complex explanations.

You could say, wait, Wolfram has these cellular automata exhibiting very complex behavior from simple rules. Yes, that's true, but that doesn't explain it, it just says where it comes from. Complex systems have lots of variability and the requisite variety is in thoughts.

What is the variety of your thought?

I Am Ridiculous

2007-10-14T12:47:00.000-07:00

I Am Ridiculous

I forgot I was ridiculous

for the moment, thinking:

"The flowers I picked from the wallpaper are real,

(as I always do), but I am not ridiculous for this."

I forgot I was ridiculous

taking things to heart

like a fool

(as I always do)

thinking:

"But I am not a fool for this."

Now I remember

and

I am embarassed,

lest I

forget again,

that

I am, ridiculous.

Involuntarily Kierkegaardian

2007-10-09T23:43:00.000-07:00

This is the experiment I will try from the lowest point (so far...)

The way out, is through forgiveness. It is the only sign of real love.

The way to forgiveness is through compassion. It is the only sign that you can really see.

The way to compassion is through suffering. It is the only way to truly be.

The Pointless Peak

2007-10-07T10:50:00.000-07:00

Live every day as though it were the first day of your life.

John had decided not to go back to art school. It had been his dream through all of those tortuously dull years of looking forward; looking forward. But now, here he was, and it just seemed silly. Besides, his hands hurt most of the time from Arthritis and holding a brush would be difficult.

What he had gotten was comfort. No worries about money, where to live, health, nothing. After all that having to be somewhere all the time and struggling and rushing and hard days and nights, it was great to just relax.

The grand kids were coming on Tuesday and he liked that. They were fun to watch: "all that energy".

He liked to sit and watch the news or shop for those things he'd always wanted.
The books he hadn't had time to read back then, or that video, "what was that video?".

He'd bought a guitar with some video lessons from some guy who sounded "pretty good!", but eventually gave it to one of the kids.

"Art School" was the last lay-away item to be abandoned. He'd always thought of himself as an artist. All those dull years, he had thought: "I'm really an artist." Now, he knew better, or was too tired to care.

All he wanted now was to be comfortable and rest after his long journey here.

Collage

2007-10-06T12:12:00.000-07:00

excerpt from Heather McHugh's "What He Thought"

The statue represents

Giordano Bruno, brought

to be burned in the public square

because of his offence against authority, which was to say

the Church. His crime was his belief

the universe does not revolve around

the human being: God is no

fixed point or central government

but rather is poured in waves, through

all things: all things

move. "If God is not the soul itself,

he is the soul OF THE SOUL of the world." Such was

his heresy. The day they brought him forth to die

they feared he might incite the crowd (the man

was famous for his eloquence). And so his captors

placed upon his face

an iron mask

in which he could not speak.

That is how they burned him.

That is how he died, without a word,

in front of everyone. And poetry--

(we'd all put down our forks by now, to listen to

the man in gray; he went on softly)-- poetry

is what he thought, but did not say.

(full poem here http://www.spondee.com/poems.html)

In 1963, he was arrested and in 1964 charged with parasitism ("тунеядство") by the Soviet authorities. A famous excerpt from the transcript of his trial made by journalist Frida Vigdorova was smuggled to the West:
Judge: And what is your profession, in general?
Brodsky: I am a poet and a literary translator.
Judge: Who recognizes you as a poet? Who enrolled you in the ranks of poets?
Brodsky: No one. Who enrolled me in the ranks of humankind?
Judge: Did you study this?
Brodsky: This?
Judge: How to become a poet. You did not even try to finish high school where they prepare, where they teach?
Brodsky: I didn’t think you could get this from school.
Judge: How then?
Brodsky: I think that it ... comes from God.[1]
For his "parasitism" Brodsky was sentenced to five years of internal exile with obligatory engagement in physical work and served 18 months in Archangelsk region. The sentence was commuted in 1965 after prominent Soviet and foreign literary figures, such as Evgeny Evtushenko and Jean Paul Sartre, protested.

anuther one what come to meeting in their overalls

2007-10-04T15:51:00.000-07:00

OK - here's a new term: Information Fission

I say it is inevitable due to Wolfram Computational Equivalence, Digital Physics, etc.

plus Solomonoff's agenda -

Solomonov's equation:

and the associated error equations.

Splitting the bit -

Knowledge as work done by information

If instead of hypotheses based on data values (information) it was fed knowledge (extra symbols, relations, functions, etc.) or simply metadata -

When information is turned into decisions about a "state of affairs" that improves them with respect to some frame of reference (cost matrix, value tree, goal seeking system, etc.) then we could say that the work to move it from state i to state j is a measure of the increase in order of the overall system - which should be measurable in correlates of pressure, volume and temperature.

Truth value is the invariant. Perturbing a suitably prepared knowledge base might produce a chain reaction of inferences that lead to an imrovement in the knowledge base, preparation process, and inferencing mechanisms. Maybe this is rule e for stochastic cellular automatons.

Maybe clock speed is like the speed of light - or we just use it as the clock speed -

Wouldn't it be weird if it was something like the K = nC^2, where K is a measure of knowledge in suitable units, n is the amount of information in bits and C is the familiar speed of light.

SoulJack - np-completeness and "the good"

2007-10-01T15:07:00.000-07:00

If you know about NP-Completeness and other completenesses and incompletnesses regarding global solutions and you apply it to optimizing the human condition as it's own system and/or cooperating in a larger system, then practical ethics must account for the non-realizability of certain constructs.

Is there a basis for believing ethical dilemmas are somehow NP-Complete?

At some point, each ethic has to deal with the day-to-day problems of boolean satisfiability, traveling-salesman, clique, etc. - especially if the way these problems are solved determines the physical constraints imposed on the members of society.

Yet, people can know this, and not use it in their personal religion/spirituality/metphysics/ethic/morality/etc.

I believe that a side effect of our culture is the devaluation of the real aspects of our real lives. We watch movies about heros sacrificing for a cause or living the big life, but we don't apply it to our own lives, we play it safe. We say we believe in this or that, but we don't practice it in daily life, as though our daily life doesn't count.

Whatever the reason this seems to happen, it is a tragedy for our entire culture. I hear people talk a lot of science and then claim to be this or that sect of christian along with some set of rules that separate good from bad - that is, the human condition is NP-Complete but god's judgement is the oracle that always guesses the "right answer" - how great can a mind be if it is governed by a lesser mind?

What if most of these "moral habits" were reconsidered by the better minds of our nation. What if every truly educated thinker had as much ambition about their personal philosophy as they did their career?

What if managing the continuous duplicity of saying we believe in certain things (justice, freedom, love, etc.) and behaving according to ritual and atavistic mores dulls the mind and the soul.

Is there anyone left not on Prozac or some other SoulJack?

Hush - what's that quiet?

2007-10-01T14:44:00.000-07:00

Hush - what's that quiet?

We listened to the lawman

til thet got old

then we listened ti the banker

til all's bought and sold

Thun we listened ta the preacher

til all the truths was told

and we listened to the doctor

til all the pills'd been doled

We listeln tu tha fiddle man

till all the feeling's been bowed

Un we listn'd ta tha science man

'bout how we hed evol'd

And then we knowed it all

we warn't no fools.

........

and came a hush

so lonesome and cold

We was losing our grip

by nothin'

hold

Note to my unself

2007-09-27T16:54:00.000-07:00

Charles Ives' piano music has impossible spreads in it. He knew they were impossible, but felt that the music demanded it, and so, in they went.

Whether anyone ever reads this or not, I will write it.

What I am trying to learn; to discipline myself towards is to be compassionate regardless of how I am treated and to be mindful no matter how hideous things are. To love, regardless of what I get in return, and to make my life a living poem no matter how much the world tries to turn me into a ledger.

It seems to take a peculiar type of stubborn - I'm reading Huckleberry Finn and that's helping. I'm also reading Beyond Good and Evil -

People see the point of survival, but they don't see the point of learning to reduce suffering, to overcome ignorance, to forgive, and give, and love. "If you ask, what is the point of love, you don't know love".

Here's my take on it.....

The Point

To live the life of the flesh, and die eventually then;
the point seems, (like for all animals, all competitors),
what does well
increases

what doesn't
decreases

The point is
winning
surviving
coming out on top;
but not for you...
for the species
or it's predators
or it's parasites
or it's symbiotic
communion.

To live the life of the spirit
to experience god
as forgiver
as free giver
as helper

as brother, sister, mother, father, lover

as double
for trouble

and to experience
creation
as

witness, artist, stoner, connoisseur.

What is the point of experiencing god?

What else is there?

Here is some real poetry -> Heather McHugh

Calculus of my micro-epiphanies

2007-08-17T17:54:00.000-07:00

Here's a first glass bead game:

The Rubaiyatt and monotonicity in description logics.

A sprite on my horizon......

2007-08-14T17:46:00.000-07:00

Some Good Advice

Read Gide twice.

Read him in need,

read him in tweed.

Read him with Sanburg,

read him with Calvino,

read him to a whimsical

neutrino.

Read Gide,

ravaged by greed.

Read Gide, when

you're ready to seed.

Whatever you do,

naughty or nice...

Read

Gide

twice!

god's witness

2007-07-04T10:14:00.000-07:00

Someone's knocking on my door.
Who would be knocking on my door on the 4th of July?
I open the door and there stands Grace.
She has her bible open and a stack of "Watchtowers" - she is a member of a particular demographic of Jehovah's Witnesses: usually African-American, always dressed up, flaunting the fact that they don't celebrate holidays by "witnessing" to you on your day off, excellent scholars, articulate, upright, law abiding, moderately educated (usually by kinship - "I have a nephew who's a Physicist, our deacon is a Doctor,..."), polite and extremely clean. I look up the street and I can see the whole squad, maybe three more groups, spread out over the area, doing a house to house, starched, pressed, and creased.

opening - "Do I want to know what's wrong with the world today?"

"Yes, I do.....
But, I don't believe in a truth that depends on the printing press. I think the truth is everywhere, in all experience, all thought, all imaginings, all hopes, all things, everywhere."

Grace and I argue for a bit (it's in the rules). I can't help noticing her eyes. She has those pale blue eyes that you see sometimes in an African-American, shimmering ice blue eyes that you can see in your mind from then on.
We argue some more: "But it's been proven that Jesus actually existed."
"But it's been proven that there need not be such a thing as the past."
etc.
I ask the woman with her, "Do you believe in a truth that can only be gotten if you can read, or if someone can read to you? Does that make sense to you?" She just smiles.
Grace is pointing to something in the bible: "word of god, word of god, so-and-so said, so-and-so wrote, ......"

I tell Grace about the truth I hear in Miles Davis, or Coltrane, or in math, or computer science or birds. How about Beethoven believing that god spoke in music?

She knows all about that. (They always do. It's very important to them to know all of the counters to their arguments. They believe their logic to be impeccable and so their knowledge of the world must be "impeccable". She tells me she met Duke Ellington, and heard Art Tatum play when she lived in New York. She doesn't want to, but she doesn't really mind my point of view, we're starting to warm up to each other.
I introduce myself and ask her name. "Grace, I'm 82, and this is my daughter Pam" - Pam is standing out on the sidewalk and is probably in her 50's, Grace is on my porch.
I ask Pam, so do you like Duke Ellington?
Grace waves me off, "she doesn't understand what you're saying, a problem at child birth." I smile at Pam and now I recognize a child's smile.
I love Grace and all of her hard working buddies, and I think that even though they are insanely wrong, they deserve all those Watchtower things they want: The 144,000 , Armageddon, a god who takes being called by his "right name" very seriously, the whole thing; give it to them. Bless their hearts, there are plenty of universes. The things that draw them there justify the hypocrisy and the irony.
Pam and I smile in each other. She is such a sweetie!
To her, it's all nonsense, she just wants to go, and tugs on Grace's blouse.

I see vacuous people....

2007-06-20T00:04:00.000-07:00

Yoo-hoo

Oh, vacouous yoo
vacuously troo
Yoo knew;
trooth over survival
beauty over pain

You may have noticed the new graphic header for the blog.
It's a set of deformations of Solomonoff's Algorithmic Probability equation (Sholarpedia, MIT Lecture). ALP in essence takes the weighted sum of all the hypotheses about a set of observations. It has been shown that ALP learns to correctly predict any computable sequence with only the absolute minimum amount of data.
You can get it straight from the horse's mouth here, although, be forewarned, Ray is struggling with a missing front tooth which makes it hard for him to enunciate.

Something you probably don't know, is that Ray Solomonoff was in Steven Wright's short film, "One Soldier"!
In the film, there is a scene where Steven Wright's civil war character meets himself from 40 years in the future. His future self tells him not to worry about 40 years from now, he will will have been dead for 37 of them anyway. The man playing the 80 year old Wright is Ray Solomonoff. I saw his name in the credits and went back and checked, and sure enough it's the guy in the picture. As far as I know, no one else has noticed this. How deadpan is that?
So, vacuous you; have some fun with Ray and his beautiful and profound ideas about reality.